Student Permission Slip I, , Declare By Signing This Form That I: Fill & Download for Free

Life gets bad a lot. And when you don't think it can get any worse, it often does. But, eventually, I have found it always gets better again. Then, once it is good, or even great, it will get worse again. That is just how it goes.So what to do when you are ready to give up?You keep living, reaching out to social support systems (friends, family, community help centers), and try to re-frame the constant negativity of your mind by remembering the simple positive facts (examples: I can walk, I can talk, I can eat, I can make love, I have the freedom to change my situations, I can always walk away and start over, even if it means I start with absolutely nothing and have to get a really lousy job to keep myself off the street). Don't give in to the hate for your life, or for your surroundings/circumstances. Keep trying to hope, whether that means joining a religion, a club or just starting a journal. Try volunteering, even if you are poor and overworked. Helping others makes you feel like a good person, even if you don't feel like one. Try to curtail the inevitable anger, and the self-destructiveness that follows. Most importantly: FORGIVE! Yourself first, and then those that hurt you. Sleep, even if you have to take Benedryl or a prescription sleep med to do so. It is amazing the power of positive thought when coupled with a proactive drive to actually change your circumstances. Network, make friends, be kind to EVERYONE, and remember all those who helped you in every way. Try to write thank you notes always, but especially try to write them when life is crap. It will make you focus on those who helped, and remind you that life isn't a solo act. This is my super long story, which believe it or not, is shortened (I understand if you stop reading here):In 1999 I found myself homeless for a day in a new city and state. I moved to NYC to go to Fordham because my dad had forbid me from going to Sarah Lawrence College but said he would have my rich step-grandma pay for Fordham. The university was late notifying transfers of acceptance and since my father didn't help me with anything regarding planning - he in fact seemed to be actively making my life harder at every opportunity - I somehow missed the fact that I was responsible for my own housing upon arrival. The "helpful" administrator informed me that most students took apartments near school - in the Upper West Side of Manhattan- and sent me on my way to orientation. I had arrived with two suitcases and $500 dollars. I had already spent $200 on a cellphone. Luckily I am friendly, and managed to meet two fellow transfers. One was a sweet redhead and the other was a tough gal from Poland who had already been living and working there. The tough girl asked my job experience and I informed her I had worked at the Police Department on campus. She asked my dating experience and I informed her I had only ever had one serious boyfriend and he was my only sexual experience. She told me she could get me a job, but that I seemed far too naive to make it. I didn't care. We ditched orientation and she had me buy a slutty Chinese red dress and very high heels. Then she got me an interview where she worked, at a strip club near school. I hung around the rest of the day with some freshmen guys and the red-headed transfer girl who, though rich, found herself without an apartment for a couple weeks as her parents negotiated the buying of a condo for her on 72nd and Amsterdam. It was she who befriended the freshmen while I was out with the tough girl. That night, I tried to walk in that dress and heels the 10 or 15 blocks to the job "interview". I had to take the heels off after two blocks and use some of my scarce funds for a cab. I am a tomboy in personality who had never had to walk in heels that high (five or six inches). The manager eyed me like cattle, and had me walk up and down the hall (thank goodness for a brief stint as a Nordstrom's model in high school- which I sucked at, but it did teach me that stupid figure eight walking technique.) He declared that I was perfect since they had no Asian cocktail waitresses, and explained that the club would charge me $75 - to be taken from the first day's tips - for a tiny slutty cocktail outfit and that I would start work the next day. Money problem semi-solved. Now to address the housing situation; the freshmen guys gave us permission to sleep on their living room floor. It was beneficial to them because they used our "homeless girls" situation to meet the other freshmen girls on their floor (only girls could sign in girls overnight) and they allowed us to sleep over at their place for weeks until I saved enough to illegally rent an apartment in Spanish Harlem. By then, the red-headed girl's parents bought her the condo. So while the day started off horribly, it ended on an okay note. Not that I had wanted to work in a strip club, and I felt ashamed and sad for myself, but in the long term this would end up being one of the best days of my life because it armed me with with the knowledge that I can survive anywhere. The crap from those days will always follow me in many ways, but it doesn't define me. What did define me was learning that dramatic change is possible, for better or for worse, and that the only thing you can do is to fight against letting those worse days become your every day.Still, less than a year or so later I would forget all that "empower-thyself" confidence. In 2000, my grandmother decided not to pay my college anymore, and sent me only a note explaining her money would stop. I would learn 13 years later that this was all due to my father who had asked her to stop paying, stating that he just didn't believe in me anymore. This most likely stemmed from my job as a cocktail waitress (I naively told him I worked at a gentleman's cigar bar, not realizing he understood exactly where that meant I worked). So despite my 3.3 GPA - which was a decline from my 3.9 at UCSD Revelle College - and despite working full time, volunteering part time at Head Start in Black Harlem, and going to school full time, (I should mention I developed quite an addiction to No-Doz and sleep meds at this time,) she left me with a ten thousand dollar bill due (I had already taken midterms when she informed me of her stop-payment). In the most awful and/or humiliating moment in my life (and I have survived plenty of awfulness, as have we all), I tried out as a dancer. I am not confident about my body and am not a great dancer, so this was doomed from the start, but it was the only way I could think of to get 10 thousand in the two weeks the school allowed me (besides prostitution or illegal methods). It was awful and scarring ,and still, I was not hired to dance. Plenty of the regular guys would never forget it, or cease to bring it up. It lowered the opinion of the bouncers in the club regarding me, and the already constant sexual harassment (that is part of that job) that was constantly wearing on me got even worse. I was now just another college drop out. I eventually quit and got a less paying job at Jaffa Cafe in the village to keep my sanity, and from there worked trendy fine dining. Yet after a year, I still couldn't make enough to stay in the city I now loved and realized I would never make enough to go back to Fordham. (I worked out a deal with the Dean to drop the charges on the promise I would come back. This took groveling. Begging. Crying. Humiliation. A complete destruction of my pride. All things I had never done before or since.) My dad indicated that he would be kinder if I moved home (as in, he would assist me by paying for college tuition), so I moved back just weeks before 9/11/01. I was stuck in my dad's house watching the news and frantically dialing friends for days. I regretted the move already since I would never have been near the towers when they fell, but at least I could have checked on friends. What followed would be the hardest years of my life. My dad seemed to hate me even more in person (while I was away he had "forgotten" to tell me they were moving, so I came home to a new city and home). I transferred back to UCSD and reapplied, and was rehired at UCSDPD as a CSO. Yet my Dad still didn't find me worth remembering. He had already forgotten my birthday while I was in NY (but remembered my brother's, which is the same day). Now he kept "forgetting" my tuition (which had the same payment schedule as my brother's, who went to UCSB). My father wouldn't let me file taxes independently and kept declaring me which made me unable to get financial assistance. I don't believe in lawsuits though many advised I should sue for independent status. I was miserable but had my health, my good grades and a general confidence in my intellect. But when my grandfather died during midterms my GPA slipped a bit. I started to get sick a lot because I was stressed, even before this happened. I hated UCSD. I hated everything about it. I missed NYC and wondered why I had come home. Why my father's blessing was so important. Then my Godfather died during the next quarter's midterms and my GPA slipped some more. Now I barely held onto my health and certainly doubted my intellect. So by the time my best friend from childhood died the day after my 22nd birthday and a week before finals it is no surprise that my GPA plunged into Academic Probation territory. Life just kept getting worse. And worse. I talked to the Dean to try to have her help me retroactively withdraw from classes. After making me wait an hour for my appointment, her first question was why I hadn't come to withdraw sooner (I worked through summer and didn't go to her until the end of summer quarter, whereas all these deaths were from Fall then Winter then Spring quarters). I replied, "Because my best friend fucking died and I couldn't get over it." She told me that since I showed her no respect by swearing, that I deserved none in return. I pointed out that I was a 3.9 student, and now was a 2.6, and that something obviously happened to cause that. Then I apologized profusely, but my anger outweighed the sincerity of my words and she didn't care. My job ended at UCSDPD after I no longer had a car, and couldn’t afford another one. I stayed another year but ended up dropping out of UCSD a semester before graduating because I was going to kill myself. That last year I had no job, no car, no money, and only one friend (who is now, after a few years of silence, still a close friend). But him and I were both so depressed, and we turned to some drugs to study, and he ended up with a bad addiction. Instead of explaining this to me, he dropped out of my life for years. I had nothing now except my apartment, my pothead roommate and his ill-treated girlfriend, and I regularly worried about even making rent (though my father did help in this one area some of the time, probably since he cosigned the lease). My brother once even asked Dad for money (they never rejected him) just so he could give it to me. I was dead inside and wanted to be dead for real. I had already tried in the past (I tried to hang myself from a belt in the closet which collapsed under my weight, which is pretty damned hilarious now, but made me feel like a further failure then).So in 2003, I moved home to be with my mother, who is poor but who has a house in SF (where she rents out every single room, with a minimum of 6 people sharing spaces at all times). It was she who took out a second and third mortgage to pay my tuition when my dad forgot. She sacrificed so much to just make sure I stayed alive. I drove away nearly everyone else, even my closest friend from high school, who dis-invited me to her wedding (I was her maid of honor) saying I was just too miserable a person. Things really didn't seem to be getting better. I was giving massages (which led to some scary situations) for money, and just trying to make it through every day, but without doing anything other than making drinking friends to be proactive to help myself out. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I no longer believed that I could go from homeless to homed in a day. I didn't believe anything was possible. I dated a boring sweet guy until he showed me the ring he was going to buy me to propose. It was modern and expensive and not me at all. I realized he was a sweet boring guy that didn't know me at all, and whom I had been using for stability. I didn't want to be a user. I also knew I was just settling. So we took a break but he never tried to get me back, despite being all it would have taken to have made me his MRS. For years now I drank every spare dollar I had, and didn’t have much spare money anyway, and luckily most of those drinking buddies are still my friends. I just kept barely living. I finally got a decent job as Ground Control Operations for Skywest and life seemed to be looking up. I dated this guy briefly and it turned out he was the ex of a manager there, who eventually got me fired even though the guy and I broke up quite a bit beforehand. Finally, a bit thereafter, while still employed, I thought I had truly fallen in love with my writing partner friend, but he broke up with me on Halloween because a girl he had had a crush on for many years (I had known of her) moved back into the city. I was fired from Skywest that same week. I was devastated since I felt like life had finally been getting better. So I walked into my local bar (the owner had called me because he heard I'd been fired and offered me a night of free drinking) and saw this rather large guy, who I had already known and chatted with a few times in the past, but who I had thought was dating this gorgeous, tough, fully tattooed girl since she always walked directly to him and sat with him. She was so beautiful a local artist had painted her and she adorned the wall of the bar for his show around that time. She wasn't there that day, and he was sitting outside instead of at the bar. He dropped his change and all six foot three inches of him was stooped over trying to grab it, saying, "I've lost my cents! I've lost my cents!" I thought this was adorable and leveled with him: "The guy I loved just dumped me, I just lost my job, and I have two movies waiting for me at home that are romantic. You look like you would be good at cuddling. Will you come home with me and watch them? We will not be fing." He took me up on it, and long story still long, we got married and have built a solid life together.He was just an apprentice then, and I was a nothing. But within one week I got hired (through drinking with an employee) at a small dysfunctional company that I ended up running operations for. I also got hired through a neighbor to work as a barista and started doing massages again for money. They were all miserable jobs but made enough money to pay for my apartment, utilities and some nights out. The boyfriend proposed when he was transferred to Chicago, and we have been married almost 7 years now, together for almost 9. I still drink, but rarely, and definitely not so heavily. I am amazed to not be a drug addict. I still have not managed to find the dream job but have been a paralegal for the past few or more years (when I do work), and will possibly start classes to become a hypnotherapist as of August if the timing works. (It didn’t.) My husband is now a layout foreman and surveyor and makes enough to support me, which is good because we believe in staying together when he travels (which is constantly) and no one wants to hire a person who is going to move with only a few days notice. I have worked when we are home for lengths of time, and volunteered whenever I can when we are elsewhere. This has led to some fantastic and horrific experiences. Fantastic: I taught English as a Second Language, I taught literacy to parolees and I walked dogs (though when I did this for the Chicago Animal Shelter it was horrible because the dogs kept getting destroyed). Also horrible: I took care of a paralegal friend who is legally blind after her husband lost his leg and his life a few times, (they revived him three times) due to an awful motorcycle crash, leaving her without transport or support. It is both a positive and negative to move for his job a lot (22 times in the last 8 years). Back when he proposed a surprising amount of our San Francisco friends told us we were stupid and insane to be marrying so young: at 25 (him) and 27 (me). It is the smartest and happiest decision I have ever made. He had six younger siblings (eight now with marriages), 7 grandparents, and 2 parents that accepted me in a way my own father never did then. My mom will always be my hero and best friend (alongside my husband). And now that my dad recently had a stroke, even he and I are close, and I see him once a week when I am in the state. My husband and I own a small condo in Marin county in the Bay Area of California, and have a better life than I would have ever believed possible, even back in the days when my future as a teacher seemed attainable. Even though I seem to be infertile and always wanted kids, I know that my life, as it is, is amazing. My Korean grandmother, who I adored and who helped raised me just died on 2/22/2014. So I am depressed again, but despite her sorely felt absence, I know I am still lucky. I have this huge family and constant family drama (such as the fact that I am currently in Georgia helping my sister in law through a divorce and move), I am constantly moving or traveling (for example: I will be here in Georgia, go home to CA for two days, then fly to ID to help out my grandfather for a week, then come home a few days, then go to Germany for my husband's job for a couple months, then fly home to CA for a few days/ maybe a week or two, then move to Cupertino for approximately two years). There are constant ups and downs from these factors. Life isn't some fairy tale of happily ever after. It takes work. Every day. It takes forgiveness and compassion and a lot of blood and sweat and tears. But my life will never be as miserable as it was those many years of utter hopelessness. I realize that all that pain led me to him. I truly believe now that though things will always get worse sometimes, they will also always get better. But only if you can survive to witness it.Please, please please...Don't be like my beautiful and talented God-sister who just 4 years ago felt alone enough to kill herself, despite having a wonderful career and loving family. She never let us know how alone she felt. If you feel like suicide, please remember that It is selfish to those who love you. Find help if you are sad and feel hopeless. Because hopelessness is a soul killer, and the only remedy is to keep on striving through it until you find something you can love or hope for again. Try to find something you love, ideally, and strive towards deepening and connecting yourself to that love. If you can't find something to love in this life, find something you can hope for. Work towards that. If you can't find something you can hope for in this life, find something to do. And just keep doing something - anything - until you can find something to hope for or love.Update: We tried every avenue to have kids, and just when we gave up, we were offered a child through a friend of a friend, and now have a wonderful 3 month old boy. (We are still in the process of adopting him, but are his legal guardians since his second day of life.) I was one of the luckiest people in the world before, and didn’t think life could give me anything else more wonderful than my husband, but as I write this, a small baby sleeps peacefully, and I cry from this momentous feeling of overwhelming love and luck.

April, 2018The short answer … banned from sustainable employment in Japanese academia.Just some thoughts on the matter, some more random than others …Generally speaking, Japanese institutions, especially colleges, are run according to a strict hierarchy, the structure of which doesn’t seem to be closely correlated with merit, and like all institutions, tend to depend on opaque, rule-driven behavior, rather than the empathy-driven morality of learning / nurturing communities.Forget that baloney about Japanese culture excelling at group work. The Far Eastern virtues of ‘harmony and traditions’ are not so different from the Western counterpart of ‘individuality and freedom’ … just buzzwords for ruling elites to herd the majority into a superficial compliance to authority … ‘authoritarianism’ being the operating word. They might have been ideals in small communities, but as larger numbers of people tend to do, displace those communities with hierarchies, replace empathy with cognitive constructs of tradition, law, or algorithms … all of which may give lip service to community values, but are thinly veiled justifications for the hierarchical power structure we social primates are so fond of.The biggest difference is the tool of choice by which the ruling elite control the disposable human capital beneath them … and the oxymoronic titles of these two books alone should be enough too spell it out:1 — For the West, Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent2 — For the East, Edited by Vlastos, Invented Traditions of Modern JapanSchools, corporations, religions, governments, think-tanks, and even some NPOs — in either the Far East or the West, are not democratically run. When was the last time you, the typical Quora reader, were elected to the board of directors on earned merit alone?For those who haven’t seen this movie about the dysfunctions of ‘corporations’, I hope you take a peak, and just imagine similar dysfunctions to all groups, since the dawn of civilization, larger than local communities.Large populations of we herding primates are organized into hierarchies, and those at the top are largely there through the privilege of inheritance, or the dark triad behaviors of self-entitlement.As pointed out in the documentary, through morally questionable legal gymnastics, corporations have been granted ‘personhood’. But when when the social dynamics of a collective entity are compared with a relatively normal single individual, the collective lacks a collective moral autonomy that individuals are expected to aspire to mature.The collective ticks off the traits of a narcissist and psychopath. The priority of the corporate collective is legally constrained to profiting the shareholders, not the stakeholders … a zero sum game that is won by externalizing losses to competitors, the infrastructure, and/or the environment.This cuts deeper into human nature than capitalism or socialism. It is the social dynamics of in-gropus and out-groups, populations of scale, and hierarchies. The narratives barely holding the cultural conceits holding a corporate nation-state’s public education, history, and news together barely maintain the cohesive narratives of our cultural conceits. Though new in the West, as far as I can see from chats with educated native Japanese, the Far Eastern hierarchies do not even have a word for Collective Narcissism, yet it is the in-group water these fish swim.Again, forget that baloney about Japanese culture excelling at group work. The culture is obsessed with competition and ranking that would make an American blush. Any collaboration between schools, companies, or institutions in general, if done at all, tends to be secretive, and antithetical to the narratives and conceits which hold the lower ranking members of the group together.For the big picture … I would agree with the documentary, and go a bit further, in saying that homo sapiens, is by nature, most optimally a social primate that hopefully matures into a responsible member of a community … thus ALL institutions (corporate, government, religious, educational, etc.) eventually undergo mission drift / mission creep into corruption and eventual failure. With our current technological capacity lacking both an equivalent moral capacity and unlimited natural resources, I can’t help but to expect our sins to catch up with us in a catastrophic malthusian meltdown. The task of the morally autonomous human should be to prolong that day of reckoning, altruistically if necessary.My poster boy for mission creep / mission drift is Harvard University. With the world’s largest endowment of around 40 billion dollars, it is by far the world’s wealthiest university, and has more disposable cash than some countries. Yet America’s oldest school was founded by a clergyman, John Harvard, with the intent on instructing future clergy in ‘god’s ways’. Alumni and former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, when justifying to the collective slap on the wrist by the Obama administration for bankers grabbing such obscenely high salaries and stock options in a land of increasing poverty, answered with a line from prosperity theology that likes of Jim Baker or Donald Trump would appreciate … that bankers do gods work (as if nurses and teachers do not). Journalist Matt Taiibi, in his famous Rolling Stone magazine article, The Great American Bubble Machine, began with a bang …“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”Back to a more parochial social landscape, In either my native American culture, or Japan, if the boss says ‘black is white’, you either ignore the cognitive dissonance and respond in the affirmative like a machine-man should, or you are out. Corporate or private, I’d say Japanese institutions are about as ‘democratic’ (community-driven) as American institutions … which is not very much.What is particularly frustrating about ‘educational’ institutes is the blatant hypocrisy of the gap between professed values (empowering the individual to reach their full potential, and building compassionate, critically-thinking, problem-solving communities — who are also able and willing to hold authority accountable) and actual goals (identifying ‘talent’ through standardized testing, funneling that talent into institutions of appropriate power and prestige — and therefore further enhancing the power and prestige of the identifying / funneling ‘educational’ institute, thus moving up the ladder of ‘being more selective’ (exclusive) than competing institutes, and therefore more powerful) … a damned zero-sum game of winning at the expense of others.There are too many examples of how this plays out over time by looking at the feeding-funneling ground of U.S. Ivy Leagues. Just look at dog-eat-dog, self entitlement of the dark-triad driven individual who is moving between educational and for profit institutions, and clambering to climb to the top of either … ‘Really Graceful’ does an excellent job here.What ‘Really Graceful’ says about the Education system is mirrored by Japan’s, and I dare say the systems in China and most of the Corporate Capitalist world.Although hierarchies may be the default organization of social primates when they exceed small communities, Japanese institutions are notorious for one’s status based on the old boy’s network, gender, ethnicity, or simply age.Hundreds of years of mission creep have reduced the original Confucian meritocratic ideals of institutions to a kabuki-show-cover for concentrations of power decided by families, connections, and blind ambition. That being said, as the political situation in my native U.S. is demonstrating through my example of Harvard above, these kind of social dynamics may be par for the course, world wide.For a good example of the corruptive dynamics of ‘mssion creep’ or Mission Drift’ … just look at the breeding ground of high flying Wall Street CEO’s, Harvard University. Alumni and former Goldman Sachs CEO ”Blankfein Says He's Just Doing 'God's Work' … and being a Harvard University graduate, that makes sense. After all, the school’s founding charter in 1636 stated clearly "To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ." But with with the U.S. having the world’s largest prison population (many such prisons for profit, not rehabilitation), an opioid epidemic fueled by Big Pharma, Washington Post owner and richest man in the world Jeff Bezos … timing the pee breaks of his minimum wage workers, unprecedented levels of homelessness, and so on, and so on … a few of us might be excused for meekly asking whether Harvard and Yale have Drifted from their Original Mission.One writer I’ve come to trust is Matt Taibi, whose first paragraph in his ‘Rolling Stone’ article The Great American Bubble Machine is now a cultural meme the ruling elite would just as soon ban from public school OR college text books … “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”Blankfein was right. He is doing god’s work. Only his god’s name is Mammon.What has this got to do with me being banned from higher education in Japan? Please bear with me.Here, Matt talks about a phenomenon of that ‘gray zone’ between private companies and the governent, in this case, profiteering off the sub-prime loan crisis.This kind of gray zone is a common tradition in Japan. It is called ‘ama kudarai’ … descent from heaven … describing how well paid national government workers retire early to an even better paid private sector. Mission drift with a golden parachute.In other words, Japanese institutions are not known for their leadership. They tend to be led by symbolic ‘managers’ who have only a passing acquaintance with the cultural conceit of meritocracy.Japan has a ruling aristocracy. Some are in that lofty stratosphere by ancestral tradition, others by dint of dark-triad behavior, and there is a ‘fuzzy logic’ around the edges, but it is no less real than the labyrinthine titles of British royalty.And like America and Great Britain, the current model of economics has little to do with educational ideals … and schools, as institutions, are not run by meritocratic ideals, or even educational ideals. Schools tend to be run like most other neo-liberal businesses … depending on zero-sum games and economies of scale to outsource losses rather than absorb them.When I was younger, I mistakenly put teachers on a pedestal, and aspired to a profession as either a teacher or writer. But I am a slow learner, and it took a while to find that teachers are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ as people. There is as much quality, or lack of, as can be found in any institutionalized counterpart in the arts or sports or any profession. In idolizing teachers, and therefore schools, I had made the fundamental attribution error, and indulged in that error for much too long.Schools, as institutions, are no different from banks.Scholars, academics, and administrators are not saints.Hell, even saints are not saints.But there is even less acknowledgement of quality in Japan’s educational institutions than in American counterparts.Unlike some schools in the U.S., no matter how moving, or how consistent, or how effective a teacher may be, there is little acknowledgement of that by peers in Japan. You will not see a ‘Teacher of the Year’ award in most Japanese schools … nor any equivalence of ‘The Great Courses’ series so popular in the U.S. — here crammed into one of my book cases, about $10,000 invested in what many Japanese schools see as worthless … or as a marketing gimmick at best.When my school was in the process of moving from Hino, West Tokyo, to the more upscale and trendy Shibuya of downtown Tokyo, I verified that books were seen by the school’s administration as mere shop-window accessories. It was less than a year since the Great Tohoku Earthquake had left a wake of devastated communities north of Tokyo, but rather than donate books to those communities and schools from my own school’s library, I watched in ‘shock and awwww’ as volumes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Plato, Russell, and thousands of books in Japanese, were unceremoniously fed into a garbage truck, shredding and compressing those works into easily disposable trash. Standing there alone, watching the process, I felt like I had been sucker punched in the gut.As for quality teaching, you will not even get a pat on the back by administration or colleagues for doing a good job. It is taken for granted that anyone who is a ‘sensei’ is above reproach, and not held accountable for quality, other than as a ‘managerial’ stick-or-carrot tool to get rid of trouble-makers or outsource costs.In Japan, even more than most countries, innovators are trouble-makers for those most comfortably nestled in entitled positions of authority. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out about the U.S. economic/political system, the rigidly authoritarian, centralized power structures of Japanese institutions tend to be self interested rather than goal oriented, and that ‘self’ is not even the whole institution, but rather those most comfortably nested at the top.The problem with this kind of social dynamic, though, might be summed up best with best-selling author and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s final lines about the failed Norse colony in Greenland about 500 years ago …‘Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society. Yet the society’s values were at the root of its strengths as well as of its weaknesses. The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America. Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.’Diamond, Jared. Collapse (p. 276). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.I’ve thought of the psychology of classroom dynamics as one metaphor for the group dynamics involved. Whereas small learning communities can be relatively egalitarian and empathy-driven, larger groups (probably Dunbar’s number or more) tend to depend on rule-driven moralities. But when empathy for the individual becomes irrelevant, rules become niche opportunities for ‘dark triad’ personality types, fake news or bread and circuses for the whimsical play of pareidolia, and blind spots for those suffering from prosopagnosia.Despite being well below Dunbar’s number, I could not find an education ‘community’ at my school. Only a gang of kyuryo dorobo (salary-thieves), desperately trying to look gentrified under the cover of ‘institutionalization’.Over the course of 36 years teaching in Japanese colleges, and at least 15 as a tenured Associate Professor, in weekly department meetings, or monthly academic assemblies, I have never, NEVER, heard or taken part in a discussion about educational values or goals.Never.Schools appear to be basically business opportunities for people who are not normally business oriented. Schools have become more conservative gate-keepers to the ‘real world’ of business which, at the very least, is ideologically constrained and driven by the market. Though petty politics seem to be part and parcel of the nature of homo sapiens, where businesses can not afford the luxury of racism, schools can.Culturally and institutionally embedded racism, gender discrimination, and age descrimination are among the many tools used to enforce conformity to an authoritarian hierarchy.I can’t attribute this exclusively to Japanese schools though. Former colleagues, co-workers, and doctoral cohort members at an American university in Japan have not been of any help other than a ‘gambatte’ here and a ‘I hear you’ there. And while working at least a dozen years at Temple University Japan, an American school, I’ve seen enough pettiness and bullying to realize it is the nature of the beast.Meh … maybe I’m just an ass. Just barely getting by with a little help from my friends, mostly Japanese.And another reason I can’t play the racist card so easily is because it is not just foreigners who are suffering. By chance (or is there really any chance?), today’s lead story on one of my news feeds, a translated subsidiary of Japan’s most widely read newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun.In a country like Finland, education has been the most popular career choice among college students.But most of Japan’s ‘best and brightest’ (as I suspect America’s) choose the financial sector. It is a VERY competitive country, and foreigners are not the only ‘losers’ in a zero-sum game.Among the other easy pickings of opportunists include the elderly (several times a week, an educational short is shown on NHK television about how the elderly can avoid getting scammed), the working poor (1/6 of families containing school children according to the government’s own statistics, minorities among Japanese - news reports of police officers sent down to Okinawa and using ethnic slurs against the Ryukyu people, anti-discrimination laws protecting the Ainu being passed only as recently as the 1990’s, and the huge gender gap. Even high school students have to form a labor union to fight predatory part-time companies.Of course there is nothing preventing the marginalized from being just as driven by opportunistic instincts — the same as the ‘winners’.The really dangerous gap, not just in Japan, but in most large scale industrial societies, is between our own altruistic tendencies and our opportunistic tendencies. But as a Taoist saying goes, the more laws governing the people, the more evil the people become. Hierarchies and rule-driven morality end up making more problems than they solve … making more niches for Dark triad personality types to hide and pounce.But back to that lead story about work ambitions of college students. Notice the Winter Olympics medal standings beside the lead article?I would much rather have seen a photo of the moment when Nao Kodaira wrapped her arms around the stressed-out Lee Sang-hwa. If I could find myself ‘loving’ a nation-state (and that is a big ‘if’), that would be the Japan I could learn to love, but I suspect Kodaira’s touching gesture came despite Japan’s educational system, not because of it.And back to the short reason for MY ban … everything that could have gone wrong in the scenario behind 12 Angry Men … with myself playing the part of the immigrant juror.Update: Wednesday, Feb.28, I just received the following from Quora admin:Your answer to What are you banned from? Why? is getting views. Answers with good credentials get more views and help readers. Update your credential.So I guess that means I should be updating a resume to fit this answer? (sighing) I presumed that part of my answer included enough of those qualifications so I would not slip into a vulgar display of self-promotion, but will comply with Quora’s suggestion, though it may be just a bot doing its algorithmically determined job.At the risk of later repetition in my answers, to get my ‘qualifications’ out of the way, here is the short version of my resume. Feel free to skip ahead to read my answer … or not.1 - For about 36 consecutive years, over half my life, I have been both a trainer, facilitator, and educator in Japan. I DO make a distinction between the three, and if you would like to know why, Wiki is a great place to start.Although I first started teaching at conversation schools, most of that time has been teaching in colleges and universities including Waseda, Tokyo University of the Arts, Nippon University (Nichidai), Komazawa University, Musashi University, and the list goes on. I have turned down a part-time job offer from Keio University. Those of you familiar with Japanese Universities will recognize a few Japanese ‘Ivy League’ names on my short list.2 - I had been a full-time, tenured Professor at Jissen Women's Educational Institute, having reached the rank of ‘Associate Professor', when I chose to resign under protest from what I considered racist-tinged behavior on the part of my ‘colleagues’ and administration. At the very least, they were guilty of harassment as a breach of Japanese Labor Law. Nearly three years later, and I am still looking for work that provides at least enough income to pay the rent, but find it odd I can’t even find part-time work in English skills oriented academia, and in the world’s most heavily populated Metropolitan area. Will leave it to the reader to do the math.2 - I have also taught classes, as a volunteer, from private kindergartens たまだいらようちえん to corporate in-house technical high schools Hino Motors which are not under the auspices of highly centralized MEXT (The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).3 - I have taught at public high schools sakushin-gakuin-high-schoolに関するnabinnoのはてなブックマーク and have given presentations as a volunteer at various public elementary schools and Jr. High Schools in the Hino City area.4 - Though not a particularly outstanding student, I have an undergraduate degree in biology with a concentration in Marine sciences, a Master’s Degree in Education, T.E.S.O.L., and matriculated into, though did not finish, a Doctoral program in Education at Temple University Japan where I also taught liberal arts, biology labs, and speaking / writing skills in the undergraduate program for over 10 years — Temple University, Japan Campus.5 - I have published original research regarding Education in Japan (though mostly in in-house academic journals that are not peer-reviewed), and have given several academic presentations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. regarding that research, one of which was an award winning poster session.6 - All textbooks used in Japanese public schools (elementary through High Schools) must pass through a MEXT textbook committee associated with each subject. From 2006 until 2011, I was one of maybe 3 native speakers of English in Japan on the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology English Textbook committee. I resigned only because I became too busy and stressed-out with the duties associated with a tenured position in a dysfunctional college.7 - Even though I resigned from the MEXT textbook committee, I am on the mailing list of P.A.L.E. (Professionalism and Administration in Language Education), a special interest group within J.A.L.T. (Japan Association of Language Teachers). Though mostly merely a lurker, it is through the sporadic newsletters that I am somewhat familiar with the diminishing and precarious status of non-native Japanese language instructors.8 - From the news, and my sporadic volunteer activities with a labor union, I have increasingly become aware of the precarious nature of employment for all teachers in Japan, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. I have been to Tokyo District court a few times as member of that union supporting other marginalized teachers.9 - Other peripheral volunteer activities have included workshops with the mental health care out-patients via the Hino City Government — as well as English communication classes for the office staff, supporting a loose coalition of local activists supporting the severely handicapped (pic updated Monday May 7, 2018) …several trips to rural Cambodia supporting teachers and students, frequent trips and support for a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless (Steve Martin (Steven Martin)'s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?), and 13 years as a volunteer judge/advisor for Japanese University E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contests at schools such as Tokyo University 3 times), Waseda, Keio, Sophia, Soka Daigakku, Hosei University, Takasaki City University, and my own former place of employment, Jissen Women’s College.Now that that my qualifications are out of the way, on to the answer.For the longer explanation:The context ... I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor (Associate Professor of English) in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College .The ban(s) ...1 — Banned by The English Communication Department from conducting community outreach work or volunteer activities — even with other departments at the same school, or with students in my own classes — without permission from my Department's Japanese 'colleagues'.To be clear about community outreach activities, (and repeating my qualifications listed previously), this was not in affiliation with any particular religious or political institution … I was on the board of directors of the Hino City government NPO TOKYO International Communication Committee, a volunteer English teacher at a local Kindergarten, たまだいらようちえん, volunteered as a communication facilitator for mental health care outpatients, work with a traveling soup kitchen supporting the homeless in Shinjuku … Soup no Kai, held community/student workshops with Junior Chamber International Japan, helped out with a local circle supporting the severely handicapped, took 4 trips at my own expense to rural Cambodia to work with teachers and students, volunteered as an in-house technical high school English teacher for Hino Motors, and volunteered (refusing to accept monetary honorariums) as a speech contest judge for All Japan Intercollegiate Speech Contests sponsored by the highest ranked schools in Japan … Tokyo University, Waseda, Keio, and Sophia, among others.I take volunteerism as a natural extension of an educator’s pedagogic toolbox — not just as some information to pass down to the students from the Ministry of Education, but as the obligation of an educator to facilitate, and act as a role model.I was a member of an English Communication Department. But other than the traditional top-down, sage-on-stage, one-way ‘communicating’ all too common in higher education, all too clearly, I saw my own limits as a collaborative facilitator. I was teaching college students, mostly young women.My gaps were many … gender, age and pop culture awareness (older than their parents), national culture (raised in the U.S.), and individual differences (I like fishing and playing guitar). To communicate those values central to a liberal arts education, I had no choice but to try and connect my students with those I consider worthy role models in the Japanese community.After all education should be a community, not an institution … right? At least some individuals within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology — for which I also worked as one of maybe three or four textbook proofreaders in the whole country at any single time — seems to agree. And the Ministry has also tried time and again to instill those same behavior patterns among teachers, mostly to no avail.The response by my Japanese colleagues was that such community outreach activities were irrelevant to my duties as an employee of the department and full time faculty member of the school, to exclude me from any real decision making processes, and to insist that my priority is restricted to the role of a native-speaking English informant and support for the ‘real’ teachers … presumably full-time, ethnic Japanese department members.The department chairman insisted that the Dean of the entire University was ‘wrong’ in insuring me that I had equal rights and responsibilities as other tenured Japanese faculty members. Even after repeated requests to have the Dean and the Department chairman meet to decide my status as stated in my tenured contract … they mutually refused to meet and formally decide my status. Convenient tactics on their part. Ha. The oldest trick in the book … divide and conquer.I refused to follow this ban on volunteerism on at least 8 grounds:I was told by the Dean that I was an 'equal' member of the Department, though I had no 'equal' part in making such department ’rules' ... and had no 'equal' right to question them.Japanese colleagues were not bound by the same 'rules'. Some are more 'equal' than others.Such 'rules' were contrary to the institution's stated ideals as stated on its glossy, catch-copy homepage ... University Ideology.Such 'rules' are particularly contrary to the need for volunteer work still necessary for dealing with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , not to mention covering those current social problems the government and infrastructure of Japan can not deal with ... the homeless (despite a seemingly contradictory problem of a decreasing and aging population), high rates of work induced suicide and mental health care problems, insufficient support for the aged, terminally ill, severely handicapped, and orphans, and a growing digital divide and wealth gap resulting in the hollowing out of the middle class and growing numbers of working poor — the government's own statistics state that 1/6 of Japanese children are at the poverty level or below.Such 'rules' are contrary to educational goals and obligations as expressed by MEXT:Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the highest level of authority regarding education in Japan.Such 'rules' are contrary to Japan's signing of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations).Such 'rules' are contrary to the common sense of any adult capable and willing to foster the personal growth of young people, and contrary to any socially mature adult's sense of obligation to help nurture a sustainable local community.Such ‘rules’ compelled me to ‘obey department colleagues’. Say what? How can ‘obey colleagues’ NOT be an oxymoron? Even as the only tenured ‘Associate’ Professor with a graduate degree in T.E.S.O.L., by what academic virtue did my department ‘colleagues’ presume to have the right to tell me how to teach, which language to use, and when to use it? For any other academically credentialed professors reading this … how would you feel about ‘colleagues’ outside of your own academic discipline who presume to micro-manage your classes?I was a slow learner. It took several years to figure out what ‘communication’ means when being directed to this non-Japanese member of the department. I will spell it out for you in a Japanese language lesson which I call ‘The 5 M’s’ approach to managing foreign teachers (though it is equally applied to other Japanese of lower rank within institutions).1 - Meilei - to give orders2 - Marunage - to pass the buck3 - Mukanshin - to completely ignore4 - Madogiwazoku - to marginalize someone to a seat by the window5 - Murahachibu - to completely cast out of the communityWhy ... ?Officially — 'Volunteer activities are not part of our program this year.' (As explained by two successive Department Chairmen) and you, as a foreign instructor, do not have equal rights of tenure as Japanese colleagues.Officially — ‘You do have all the equal rights and responsibilities of Japanese colleagues. (As explained by the Dean of the University).More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College — managerially problematic because the willfully contradictory status was designed only to make me compliant to orders, without any of the rights of tenure or educational obligation to the students.——————————————2 — Banned, subsequently, by the Board of Directors from:receiving any classes the following academic yeartaking my scheduled research sabbaticalWhy ... ?Officially — for refusing to sign a document prepared especially for me, demanding that I follow above stated Department 'rules' regarding community outreach activities and volunteer work.More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College.The ‘dead silence’ detail …Upon being called into a conference with the Dean and Assistant Dean and presented with the document, I was told to either sign it, or forfeit my impending 1 year research sabbatical to Cambodia. I pointed out that if I signed that document, I would be forfeiting my right and my obligation to help my own seminar student prepare for the upcoming Tokyo Jr. College English Speech Contest.Even before my ten years of tenure at the school, as a part-timer, I had been asked, and accepted, the role of volunteering to be the coach of each year’s contestant. My full-time colleagues appeared to not have either the interest, temperament, skills, or educational priorities to do so, and so I stepped up to the plate.After about 12 years or so of doing this, I petitioned to have my speech coaching ‘volunteer’ duties re-designated as one of my committee responsibilities, since volunteerism was no longer officially part of their program … and as counterparts at other schools also have their duties counted as ‘work duties’, not volunteerism.My request was granted, but being as opportunistic as they were, authority was immediately handed over to a Japanese colleague heading a new ‘Kyoiku-inkai’ (Education Committee), which I was not invited to join.During the time I had been doing this as a volunteer, I was also a member ot the Tokyo Jr. College Speech Contest Committee, and so I had the benefit of receiving communication about the contest directly at the committee meetings, and was able to have nearly a year to prepare multiple students (in the name of equal opportunity) for the contest … and all of that editing, re-writing, and bringing out the best of the student took that whole year.But now my duties had become ‘official’, and subject to receiving information on my colleague’s definition of ‘a need to know’ basis. This meant that I would now have to ask permission from my Japanese superior to ‘volunteer’, and it was only under his auspices, and at his convenience, and on his terms that I was allowed to do the same work I previously did on my own free will. All of the same responsibility, but with an added layer of bureaucratic hierarchy insuring I would not have the right to receive the direct and timely information necessary to do my job. My colleagues saw this as an opportunity to further marginalize me and concentrate institutional power into their hands.I no longer was given the courtesy of information about the speech contest until a month or two prior to the contest … as the new Education Committee did not consider it a priority to inform me of the theme or schedule of the speech contest in a timely manner. Neither making my job easier, nor bringing out the best in students was the priority of my colleagues. Putting an uppity foreigner in his place was.But back to the conference with the Dean and his demand that I sign a letter compelling me following orders from my colleagues.‘In the school’s 120 year history, has any other faculty member been asked to sign such a letter prior to taking a research sabbatical?’ I asked.‘No’ was the curt reply.The paper laid on the desk in front of me, waiting to be signed. I looked at the Dean and reminded them that as this forbids me from volunteering …. and I was specifically told by my colleagues, I no longer had the right to help even my own seminar student with the upcoming speech contest. I told them that I would sign the document … if one of the two sitting before me promised to step up and help that student prepare for the speech contest.‘Would either of you agree to take my place and help that student’, I asked?Silence.I have a digital recording of that meeting, and that’s all you can hear — a deafening silence.I refused to sign the document.I said that my obligation was to the student(s) … not to blindly following orders deliberately designed to marginalize me from performing my duties as an educator. Not by coincidence, ‘witholding information from an employee which is necessary to complete their work obligations’ is against Japanese labor law.The student came to me for help. As no one else was either able or willing, I did so. A lot. Something for details of another Quora answer later. But for the sake of context, I will say this. She wrote and spoke about being a victim of the Great Tohoku earthquake, and the real meaning of family and friends.Though we had spent a good 50 hours or more, editing, revising, recording, and analyzing videos of her practice … on the moment of her performance, the memories of a crumbled hill-top house, watching in horror as the tsunami engulfed the harbor below, and the desperate attempts to bypass the deadlocked transportation grid … all came out in a torrent of tears. But she kept her cool, and she kept her pace so as to not exceed the time limit.Half of the audience, myself included, were in tears … the judges were flummoxed.This was just supposed to be a display of English skills, not a real speech. They couldn’t just throw the meticulously detailed point sheet for judging out the window. But they couldn’t ignore the real thing, transcending typically rote memorized performances.They compromised by awarding her 2nd place in the contest.The school’s administration promptly used her result as a photo op for marketing purposes.Though her speech was about her finding the meaning of ‘family’ and ‘friends’, about the community that defines the social primate, it was made perfectly clear that I was not part of that ‘education’ community.Shortly after the speech contest and photo-op, I was notified that for disobeying department orders and for not signing the document compelling me to do so, that I had forfeited my upcoming research sabbatical and would be relieved of all teaching duties the following year.That’s when I began seeing a psychiatrist, got put on anti-depressents to hold down suicidal thoughts, and exercised my right to a medical leave of absence.The results ...After receiving notice that I would be given no classes nor allowed to take a research sabbatical, I secured a lawyer, joined a union, and took a medical leave of absence for harassment induced mental stress (and subsequently, hip-joint replacement surgery).In the ensuing two years, despite several meetings, my labor union could reach no agreement with the school, and my lawyer advised me that even though I would likely win a legal suit against the school, the Japanese judicial system is weighted in favor of institutions, and my victory would likely be a long and costly, pyrrhic victory. In the Japanese legal system, if it is ‘individual vs. institutional entity’ … the individual is pretty much ‘guilty, unless proven otherwise.’ I later realized, if one follows a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language determining what we see … that this village mentality might be correlated with the fact that the Japanese words for ‘individual’ (koujin) and ‘citizen’ (shakaijin) are only a couple of hundred years old … and presumably the rights and obligations of the two.Thinking I would just put it all behind me and find work elsewhere, I resigned a ‘tenured’ position … in protest … against institutionally sanctioned harassment, a breach of Japanese Labor Law, and a general disregard for human dignity and human rights as befitting an institution of higher learning.Now, five years since resigning, I have reached the age of 64, for some mysterious reason, I have not been able to find even a single class of part-time college work in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. After having lived over half my life in Japan as a college teacher, I have been unemployed for three years now.I am still on a nightly dose of anti-depressent and sleeping pill, and still see a psychiatrist once a month for my prescription.I keep busy with community out-reach, volunteer activities, one of which is Soup no Kai, a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless. In 2017, this NPO received the ‘Social Contributions Award from the Tokyo City Metropolitan government. Steve Martin (Steven Martin)'s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?I continue helping out with speech contests. Though I am no longer employed, I still consider myself an educator, and my honor and duty to help young students when I can … and as my policy for about 10 years now, as a volunteer. In 2017, I was a finals judge for the Soka Daigakku (Soka University) E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contest. The Ikeda Cup - 創価大学 英語研究会SEAIn early 2018, I was again invited to be a preliminary judge for an All Japan English Speech Contest held by the English Speaking Society (E.S.S.) of Japan’s highest ranking university, The University of Tokyo. Between meetings and e-mail with the student organizers, pouring over 81 speech scripts and videos, and writing remarks for each of them while judging … I must have spent about a hundred hours on the project.東京大学ESS杯争奪英語弁論大会 (The English Oratorical Contest at The UT) The contest was relatively successful, and the E.S.S. president has agreed to donate my judge’s fee to helping the Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis. I was pleased with his decision. But now that the contest has finished, the student organizer of the event has refused to answer my e-mails of inquiry regarding the status of that promise. I will think long and hard about future volunteer activities with college English Speaking Society events.(EDIT … about a year later, 2019, I have indeed exchanged letters, and was invited again to a judge, again accepted, and again … kicking myself in the head wondering if my time was well spent. Now have written over 150,000 words of comments for the 51 speech contest applicants … but only 3 of the 10 finalists, and 2 other applicants were interested in reading those observations and suggestions.)Again, I questioned the VERY sloppy judging criteria chosen by the student speech contest committee. I pointed out that the criteria does not reflect how public speaking skills are learned or taught, does not reflect salient features of effective public speaking, and does not reflect the highest ideals of a public speech or a communication community. Two years ago, the head of the committee begged me to NOT compare his goals to his predecessor (who gave a speech about the importance of good posture for ‘success’), but this year, the committee strongly insisted that the highest priority of the contest is connected to neither educational nor social problem solving goals, but to follow the will of their seniors. Yep, Tokyo University students, the future top managers of Japan Inc. are just doing a role-play practice of Invented Traditions while exchanging name cards to form their elite, oligarchic, and self-serving social networks.For those interested, you will see some very good speeches in the recent past by copy-pasting the kanji for Tokyo University’s Todaihai — ‘東大杯’ — into YouTube. You might notice that this tradition seems to have come to an end as of this year, 2019. I would like to think I had something to do with ending this corrupt and invented tradition. Here is an example of a great speech. She was the last winner of what may be the last Tokyo University All Japan English Speech Contest, and though I had some good chats with Sara about her speech, on-line and at the contest, I haven’t seen or heard from her since. I fear that her alma mater, Keio University, and intended graduate school, Stanford, may be following the same path of Mission Drift as Harvard and Yale.Meanwhile, I occasionally check the glossy home pages peddling ‘education’ in Japan, back at my former school, I see there is no longer a full-time, non-Japanese, native-speaking faculty member in the English Communication Department.I spend a lot of time reading and watching Youtube videos … mostly documentaries (love David Butler on physics), TED, and so on.As for Quora, I find myself writing fewer answers, but reading much more, and chatting one-on-one in comments or messaging.And when I tire of words, I pick up my guitar and practice bossa rhythms and jazz arpeggios … planning to play for no one but myself. Just therapy.Reflections on the big picture …Japanese institutions are somewhat overlapping in-groups, but traditionally place a priority on compliance to a collectively assumed authoritarianism.Communities are small enough to keep an empathy-driven morality. But like other large, hierarchical groups following authoritarian priorities, morality here tends to be provisional, parochial, and situational. Institutional culture takes priority over individual moral autonomy. Institutional morality tends to be driven by rule and ritual, not empathy. To further explain:Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has a very interesting theory correlating the size of the human pre-frontal cortex with the number of people we can effectively work with as a group. For the sake of brevity, I’ll define that as the number of people we can recognize by face, name, and individual characteristics and temperaments including unique skills, interests, traumas, and hopes. His studies indicate somewhere between 150 and 250 people as the optimal size for groups … and I would infer that this number of recognizing each other as individuals correlates with morality being driven by neural pathways associated with empathy. Cross cultural studies seem to replicate his results.By implication, once we exceed Dunbar's number, groups necessarily form hierarchies, which in turn are held together by a combination of provisional rules, traditions, and force … not empathy. As Hannah Arendt chronicalled in the Eichmann war crimes trials, this excuses the cog-in-the machine-human from moral responsibility or autonomy with a simple ‘just following orders’.And as the post-war behaviorist experiments of Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, and later, Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment showed, the average American was just as likely as the average Nazi prison camp guard to allow institutional authority to override empathy.I would say a lot, if not most of our cognitive dissonance, isolation, and marginalization in large scale populations, from corporate states to nation-states, is the gap between empathy driven morality and rule-imposed morality. A cultural defining historic event of Japan, the Forty-seven rōnin, hinges on this conflict of values. But I would argue that this is a conflict in human nature everywhere, and just as contradictory in what my fellow Americans will say in their pledge of allegiance, and what Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, or William Blum reveals about what goes on behind the curtains.Representatives of institutions have no qualms about lying, deception, stalling, any machiavellian tactic … all rationalized as necessary on behalf of the group, but more likely just subconscious, opportunistic behavior. Dark triad behavior. Again, this is not unique to Japan. Just look at the recent U.S. presidential election as one example.Marginalized individuals have little recourse against blatant institutional disregard of law. Institutions are cynically all too knowledgeable that the legal system is weighted in their favor … one lie at a time, one stall after another, can draw out any legal challenges for years — long enough for those responsible for malfeasance to have retired or transferred to another branch or committee deep within the institution.Even small institutions have their ‘deep state’. And the cost to the institution? Financially, a minimal loss, and at most, only a brief moment in the public forum before all is buried under bread and circuses. For example, compare your memories of the Pyongyang Winter Olympics (or any world wide sporting event) and the case of Matsuri Takahashi. Case closed.More results, the BIGGER picture ...While Japan is the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world, its Universities are ranked somewhere around 70th place. While acknowledging that 'rankings' are to be taken with a grain of salt, where there is smoke, there is fire.I would say that the priority of compliancy over the critical attitude towards authorities fostered by the liberal arts, drops Japan even further. At least a few other professionals both inside Japan Humanities under attack | The Japan Times ... and outside Japan, seem to agree Japan Dumbs Down Its Universities.According to the Hofstede Index, Japan - Geert Hofstede, management of higher education in Japan is what drops it down to such abysmally embarrassing levels. But I would also say that management is inextricably tied to a culture of deference to authority.With the ruling LDP's enfranchising of 18 year olds with the right to vote this year, BUT the new State's Secrets Law, change to the Peace-Time Constitution allowing 'pro-active, military defense', and a neo-lib climate that taxes basic food items for the growing numbers of working poor while giving tax breaks to the corporations ... this empowerment of youth may simply be a token of 'rights' that will soon have to be repaid as an 'obligation' to serve in a ramped-up military.Scary times ahead.Still, trying to do my small part for the marginalized in Japan ... most recently helped out with a mobile soup kitchen for the homeless in Tokyo ... Steve Martin | Facebook ... but of course, whether we are talking about the homeless, the high suicide rate, the falling demographics, or the falling business standards in Japan (Season of Scandal Hits Japan With Company Confession Flurry), or enough fissile plutonium stored in Japan alone to make 1,300 nuclear warheads ... are NOT a concern for Japanese 'Institutes of Higher Learning' ... which begs the question, what, exactly are their concerns? Despite the glossy homepages, my guess is that they are either simply for-profit businesses, or quasi-governmental meat grinders churning out a literate but compliant (no questions please) workforce.As for me, I take my cue from a former Dean of Helsinki University I once heard at a forum at Tokyo University. "The purpose of the 21st century university should be to solve 21st century pr0blems."My problems are not restricted to marginalization and dehumanization of based along ethnic lines. By the government’s own statistics, 1/6 of Japanese children live at the poverty level or below, (and though now somewhat dated info) the single greatest cause of death in the work force between the most productive ages of 20 and 44 is suicide … Suicide in Japan … and these are examples taken from Japanese citizenry themselves.The purpose of public education should be, though perhaps never was, socialization … raising collaborative, critical thinking problem solvers who are morally responsible to the community. But once past primary school, education, devolves mostly into a process of standardized testing and sorting … gate-keeping as a means of institutionalizing individuals. Disposable human capital. Standardization, institutionalization, and compliance are the highest priorities.This leads to another theme altogether in my writings on Quora … how naive scientific reductionism is becoming the new religion, and how it may be a terminal one at that.Standardization and institutionalization is far easier than fostering positive fundamental changes among the struggling youth. It is far easier to just give lip service to educational ideals rather than getting down and into the mud of the meaning of learning. It is far easier to go through the motions of teaching while actually serving as merely another functionary bureaucrat, a gatekeeper who uses standardized tests to identify the ‘talented’ … and pass them along to the next appropriate academic, professional, business, or political institution.Anyone familiar with Chomsky’s understanding of pro-social anarchism … ?Or even better (or worse) … the first 3 paragraphs of his 2010 Chapel Hill speech will do.Human intelligence and the environmentthe problem with Japan Inc., indeed, all humanity, I sum up as this:Empathy-driven communities are conflated with rule and ritual-driven institutions, and institutions are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Individuals, regardless of injustices suffered from those institutions, are considered guilty until proven innocent. ‘Education’ has long since been conflated with ‘propaganda’, and neither the sanctity of the maturation process of the social primate, nor the necessity of empathy-driven communities for sustainability is respected by the ruling powers that be.The failed idealist in me tends to agree with Stephen Hawking … Stephen Hawking: Greed And Stupidity Are What Will End The Human Race.And the pessimist in me, with J. Robert Oppenheimer …Lesson learned ...Yokoso (welcome to) Japan!A nice place to visit.—————————————————————————————————————Update, Wed. Dec. 14th, 2016Informed by Quora that this post will be sent to 1000 readers, I thought I would give an update. A couple of years have passed, and now 61, I am still unemployed, living off of borrowed money from Japanese friends, and the Hello Work unemployment system in the land of Hello Kitty … I have maybe 5 months left to pay the rent. Starting to sell off things through Yahoo auction.But looking at the homeless I still work with, the systematic bullying of school children evacuated from the Fukushima meltdown, the continuing pace of corporate-driven suicides of Japan Inc., and the bigger world picture — Trump and his cabinet of deplorables, Brexit, growing right-wing extremism in Europe, the tragedy of Aleppo, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya muslims in ‘democratic’ Burma — I should be grateful for still having a handful of friends, and for now … a roof over my head and food in the fridge. Outside of that, I am finding it harder to justify my continued existence.If nothing else, as a permanent outsider depending on a small community of culturally and ethnically different friends, I can empathize further with the minorities I attempted to help through my volunteer activities, and those minorities I will never have an opportunity to help. But how far can empathy carry me when I will no longer be able to pay my own rent?Hmm … just found the 6th ‘M’.My life as the Mandelbrot set unfolding — a microcosm of the forever-war between the authoritative right hand of man, and the would-be progressive hand on his left. Cognitive dissonance — built into our genes, we bi-polar apes. Meh … maybe this is just a fancy way of saying ‘what goes around, comes around.’ Karma, baby.Update … April 27, 2017I have about a month go left for unemployment insurance, still no sign of work. But it appears I am not the only one falling victim to the ‘Education Scams’ of Japan Inc. …Cautionary tale: Bern on how no protections against harassment in Japan’s universities targets NJ regardless of Japan savviness and skill level

This is a very long answer. They are the words of Jane Fonda. If you really want to know the truth from her perspective, and not the bitter sentiments of something that was a non-issue when she did it, then please read on.Keep in mind that when she went, the war was winding down. 25 k US troops were left. 70% of Americans were against the war. Our best and brightest young people were being slaughtered, and for what? Average age was something like 22, and the average infantryman was even younger. One soldier was call “grandpa” because he turned 21 while serving in Vietnam and was the oldest person in his unit.Our kids dying, calling out for their mothers as they bleeding to death in country 7000 miles away, that most people had never heard of, to “save the world for democracy”, and to keep the “domino effect” from allowing the evil commies taking over the world.I encourage you, if you believe she is the worst person alive, an absolute traitor, then have the courage to read what she has to say, and see… just see….Included are also comments from soldiers and people who were there.From Jane Fonda’s Blog; The Truth About My Trip To Hanoi - Jane FondaJANE FONDATHE TRUTH ABOUT MY TRIP TO HANOIJuly 22, 2011I grew up during World War II. My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day. I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn’t have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him. I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels.For the first 8 years of the Vietnam War I lived in France. I was married to the French film director, Roger Vadim and had my first child. The French had been defeated in their own war against Vietnam a decade before our country went to war there, so when I heard, over and over, French people criticizing our country for our Vietnam War I hated it. I viewed it as sour grapes. I refused to believe we could be doing anything wrong there.It wasn’t until I began to meet American servicemen who had been in Vietnam and had come to Paris as resisters that I realized I needed to learn more. I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them—active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular—to try and end the war. I drove around the country visiting military bases, spending time in the G.I. Coffee houses that had sprung up outside many bases –places where G.I.s could gather. I met with Army psychiatrists who were concerned about the type of training our men were receiving…quite different, they said, from the trainings during WWII and Korea. The doctors felt this training was having a damaging effect on the psyches of the young men, effects they might not recover from. I raised money and hired a former Green Beret, Donald Duncan, to open and run the G.I. Office in Washington D.C. to try and get legal and congressional help for soldiers who were being denied their rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I talked for hours with U.S. pilots about their training, and what they were told about Vietnam. I met with the wives of servicemen. I visited V.A. hospitals. Later in 1978, wanting to share with other Americans some of what I had learned about the experiences of returning soldiers and their families, I made the movie Coming Home. I was the one who would be asked to speak at large anti-war rallies to tell people that the men in uniform were not the enemy, that they did not start the war, that they were, in growing numbers our allies. I knew as much about military law as any layperson. I knew more than most civilians about the realities on the ground for men in combat. I lived and breathed this stuff for two years before I went to North Vietnam. I cared deeply for the men and boys who had been put in harms way. I wanted to stop the killing and bring our servicemen home. I was infuriated as I learned just how much our soldiers were being lied to about why we were fighting in Vietnam and I was anguished each time I would be with a young man who was traumatized by his experiences. Some boys shook constantly and were unable to speak above a whisper.It is unconscionable that extremist groups circulate letters which accuse me of horrific things, saying that I am a traitor, that POWs in Hanoi were tied up and in chains and marched passed me while I spat at them and called them ‘baby killers. These letters also say that when the POWs were brought into the room for a meeting I had with them, we shook hands and they passed me tiny slips of paper on which they had written their social security numbers. Supposedly, this was so that I could bring back proof to the U.S. military that they were alive. The story goes on to say that I handed these slips of paper over to the North Vietnamese guards and, as a result, at least one of the men was tortured to death. That these stories could be given credence shows how little people know of the realities in North Vietnam prisons at the time. The U.S. government and the POW families didn’t need me to tell them who the prisoners were. They had all their names. Moreover, according to even the most hardcore senior officers, torture stopped late in 1969, two and a half years before I got there. And, most importantly, I would never say such things to our servicemen, whom I respect, whether or not I agree with the mission they have been sent to perform, which is not of their choosing.But these lies have circulated for almost forty years, continually reopening the wound of the Vietnam War and causing pain to families of American servicemen. The lies distort the truth of why I went to North Vietnam and they perpetuate the myth that being anti-war means being anti-soldier.Little known is the fact that almost 300 Americans—journalists, diplomats, peace activists, professors, religious leaders and Vietnam Veterans themselves—had been traveling to North Vietnam over a number of years in an effort to try and find ways to end the war (By the way, those trips generated little if any media attention.) I brought with me to Hanoi a thick package of letters from families of POWs. Since 1969, mail for the POWs had been brought in and out of North Vietnam every month by American visitors. The Committee of Liaison With Families coordinated this effort. I took the letters to the POWs and brought a packet of letters from them back to their families.The Photo of Me on the Gun Site.There is one thing that happened while in North Vietnam that I will regret to my dying day— I allowed myself to be photographed on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. I want to, once again, explain how that came about. I have talked about this numerous times on national television and in my memoirs, My Life So Far, but clearly, it needs to be repeated.It happened on my last day in Hanoi. I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the 2-week visit. It was not unusual for Americans who visited North Vietnam to be taken to see Vietnamese military installations and when they did, they were always required to wear a helmet like the kind I was told to wear during the numerous air raids I had experienced. When we arrived at the site of the anti-aircraft installation (somewhere on the outskirts of Hanoi), there was a group of about a dozen young soldiers in uniform who greeted me. There were also many photographers (and perhaps journalists) gathered about, many more than I had seen all in one place in Hanoi. This should have been a red flag.The translator told me that the soldiers wanted to sing me a song. He translated as they sung. It was a song about the day ‘Uncle Ho’ declared their country’s independence in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. I heard these words: “All men are created equal; they are given certain rights; among these are life, Liberty and Happiness.” These are the words Ho pronounced at the historic ceremony. I began to cry and clap. These young men should not be our enemy. They celebrate the same words Americans do.The soldiers asked me to sing for them in return. As it turned out I was prepared for just such a moment: before leaving the United States, I memorized a song called Day Ma Di, written by anti-war South Vietnamese students. I knew I was slaughtering it, but everyone seemed delighted that I was making the attempt. I finished. Everyone was laughing and clapping, including me, overcome on this, my last day, with all that I had experienced during my 2 week visit. What happened next was something I have turned over and over in my mind countless times. Here is my best, honest recollection of what happened: someone (I don’t remember who) led me towards the gun, and I sat down, still laughing, still applauding. It all had nothing to do with where I was sitting. I hardly even thought about where I was sitting. The cameras flashed. I got up, and as I started to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what had just happened hit me. “Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes.” I pleaded with him, “You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.” I was assured it would be taken care of. I didn’t know what else to do. (I didn’t know yet that among the photographers there were some Japanese.)It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. But if they did I can’t blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake and I have paid and continue to pay a heavy price for it. Had I brought a politically more experienced traveling companion with me they would have kept me from taking that terrible seat. I would have known two minutes before sitting down what I didn’t realize until two minutes afterwards; a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever. The gun was inactive, there were no planes overhead, I simply wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, only about what I was feeling, innocent of what the photo implies. But the photo exists, delivering its message regardless of what I was doing or feeling. I carry this heavy in my heart. I have apologized numerous times for any pain I may have caused servicemen and their families because of this photograph. It was never my intention to cause harm. It is certainly painful for me that I, who had spent so much time talking to soldiers, trying to help soldiers and veterans, helping the anti-war movement to not blame the soldiers, now would be seen as being against our soldiers!So Why I Did I Go?On May 8th, 1972, President Nixon had ordered underwater, explosive mines to be placed in Haiphong Harbor, something that had been rejected by previous administrations. Later that same month, reports began to come in from European scientists and diplomats that the dikes of the Red River Delta in North Vietnam were being targeted by U.S. planes. The Swedish ambassador to Vietnam reported to an American delegation in Hanoi that he had at first believed the bombing was accidental, but now, having seen the dikes with his own eyes, he was convinced it was deliberate.I might have missed the significance of these reports had Tom Hayden, whom I was dating, not shown me what the recently released Pentagon Papers had to say on the subject: in 1966, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, searching for some new means to bring Hanoi to its knees, had proposed destroying North Vietnam’s system of dams and dikes, which, he said, “If handled right- might…offer promise…such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after a time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided—which we could offer to do at the conference table.”[1] President Johnson, to his credit, had not acted upon this option.Now, six years later, Richard Nixon appeared to have given orders to target the dikes—whether to actually destroy them[2] or to demonstrate the threat of destruction, no one knew.It is important to understand that the Red River is the largest river in North Vietnam. Like Holland, its delta is below sea level. Over centuries, the Vietnamese people have constructed –by hand!– an intricate network of earthen dikes and dams to hold back the sea, a network two thousand five hundred miles long! The stability of these dikes becomes especially critical as monsoon season approaches, and requires an all-out effort on the part of citizens to repair any damage from burrowing animals or from normal wear and tear. Now it was June, but this was no ‘normal wear and tear’ they were facing. The Red River would begin to rise in July and August. Should there be flooding, the mining of Haiphong Harbor would prevent any food from being imported; the bombing showed no signs of letting up; and there was little press coverage of the impending disaster should the dikes be weakened by the bombing and give way. Something drastic had to be done.The Nixon Administration and its US Ambassador to the United Nations, George Bush (the father), would vehemently deny what was happening, but the following are excerpts from the April-May 1972 transcripts of conversations between President Nixon and top administration officials.April 25th 1972Nixon: “We’ve got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack [of North Vietnam}…Now, by all-out bombing attack, I am thinking about things that go far beyond…I’m thinking of the dikes, I’m thinking of the railroad, I’m thinking, of course, of the docks.”Kissinger: “I agree with you.”President Nixon: “And I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?”Kissinger: “About two hundred thousand people.”President Nixon: “No, no, no…I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?Kissinger: “That, I think, would just be too much.”President Nixon: “The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?…I just want to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.”May 4, 1972.[3]John B. Connally (Secretary of the Treasury):…”bomb for seriousness, not just as a signal. Railroads, ports, power stations, communication lines…and don’t worry about killing civilians. Go ahead and kill ’em….People think you are [killing civilians] now. So go ahead and give ’em some.”Richard Nixon: “That’s right.”[Later in same conversation]Richard Nixon: “We need to win the goddamned war…and…what that fella [?] said about taking out the goddamned dikes, all right, we’ll take out the goddamned dikes….If Henry’s for that, I’m for it all the way.”The administration wanted the American public to believe Nixon was winding down the war because he was bringing our ground troops home. (At the time I went to Hanoi, there were only approximately 25,000 troops left in South Vietnam from a high of 540,000 in early 1969) In fact, the war was escalating…from the air. And, as I said, monsoon season was approaching. Something drastic had to be done.That May, I received an invitation from the North Vietnamese in Paris to make the trip to Hanoi. Many had gone before me but perhaps it would take a different sort of celebrity to get people’s attention. Heightened public attention was what was needed to confront the impending crisis with the dikes. I would take a camera and bring back photographic evidence (if such was to be found) of the bomb damage of the dikes we’d been hearing about.I arranged the trip’s logistics through the Vietnamese delegation at the Paris Peace talks, bought myself a round trip ticket and stopped in New York to pick up letters for the POWs.Frankly, the trip felt like a call to service. It was a humanitarian mission, not a political trip. My goal was to expose and try to halt the bombing of the dikes. (The bombing of the dikes ended a month after my return from Hanoi)The only problem was that I went alone. Had I been with a more experienced, clear-headed, traveling companion, I would not have allowed myself to get into a situation where I was photographed on an anti-aircraft gun.The SpinMy trip to North Vietnam never became a big story in the Summer/Fall of 1972–nothing on television, one small article in the New York Times. The majority of the American public, Congress, and the media were opposed to the war by then and they didn’t seem to take much notice of my trip. After all, as I said, almost three hundred Americans had gone to Hanoi before me. There had been more than eighty broadcasts by Americans over Radio Hanoi before I made mine. I had decided to do the broadcasts because I was so horrified by the bombing of civilian targets and I wanted to speak to U.S. pilots as I had done on so many occasions during my visits to U.S. military bases and at G.I. Coffee houses. I never asked pilots to desert. I wanted to tell them what I was seeing as an American on the ground there. The Nixon Justice Department poured over the transcripts of my broadcasts trying to find a way to put me on trial for treason but they could find none. A. William Olson, a representative of the Justice Department, [4] said after studying the transcripts, that I had asked the military “to do nothing other than to think.”But from the Nixon Administration’s point of view, something had to be done. If the government couldn’t prosecute me in court because, in reality, I had broken no laws, then the pro-war advocates would make sure I was prosecuted in the court of public opinion.The myth making about my being responsible for POW torture began seven months after I returned from North Vietnam, and several months after the war had ended, and the U.S. POWs had returned home. “Operation Homecoming,” in February 1973, was planned by the Pentagon and orchestrated by the White House. It was unprecedented in its lavishness. I was outraged that there had been no homecoming celebrations for the 10s of 1000s of men who had done combat. But from 1969 until their release in 1973, Nixon had made sure that the central issue of the war for many Americans was about the torture of American POWs (the very same years when the torture had stopped!). He had to seize the opportunity to create something that resembled victory. It was as close as he would come, and the POWs were the perfect vehicles to deflect the nation’s attention away from what our government had done in Vietnam, how they had broken faith with our servicemen.I became a target the government could use, to suggest that some POWs who had met with me while I was in Hanoi had been tortured into pretending they were anti-war. The same thing was done to try and frame former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, whose trip to North Vietnam followed mine.According to Seymour Hersh, author and journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre and, later, the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal, when American families of POWs became alarmed at the news that there was torture in North Vietnam prisons, they received letters from the Pentagon saying: “We are certain that you will not become unduly concerned over the [torture] briefing if you keep in mind the purpose for which it was tailored.”[5]But, according to what the POWs wrote in their books, conditions in the POW camps improved in the four years preceding their release—that is, from 1969 until 1973. Upon their release, Newsweek magazine wrote, “the [torture] stories seemed incongruent with the men telling them – a trim, trig [note: this is actually the word used in the article] lot who, given a few pounds more flesh, might have stepped right out of a recruiting poster.”[6]Once the POWs were home, the Pentagon and White House handpicked a group of the highest ranking POWs–senior officers, to travel the national media circuit, some of them telling of torture. A handwritten note from President Nixon to H.R. Haldeman says that “the POW’s need to have the worst quotes of R. Clark and Fonda” to use in their TV appearances, but this information shouldn’t come from the White House.[7] These media stories were allowed to become the official narrative, the universal “POW Story,” giving the impression that all the men had been subjected to systematic torture—right up to the end–and that torture was the policy of the North Vietnamese government. The POWs who said there was no torture in their camps were never allowed access to the media.Not that any torture is justified or that anyone who had been tortured should have been prevented from telling about it. But the Nixon White House orchestrated a distorted picture of what actually occurred.In my anger at the torture story that was being allowed to spread, at how the entire situation was being manipulated, I made a mistake I deeply regret. I said that the POWs claiming torture were liars, hypocrites, and pawns.I said, “I’m quite sure that there were incidents of torture…but the pilots who are saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that’s a lie.”[8]What I didn’t know at the time was that although there had been no torture after 1969, before then there had been systematic torture of some POWS. One of the more hawkish of them, James Stockdale, wrote in his book, In Love and War, that no more than ten percent of the pilots received at least ninety percent of the punishment.[9] John Hubbell, in P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, agreed, and affirmed the fact that torture stopped in 1969.[10]When the POWs came home, some who had been there longest told the press how they clogged up prison toilets and sewers, refused to come when ordered, or follow prison rules. One of the most famous, Jeremiah Denton, said, “We forced them [the guards] to be brutal to us.”[11] I relay this not to minimize the hardships that the POWs endured, nor to excuse it– but to attempt belatedly to restore a greater depth of insight into the entire POW experience with their captors.Still, whether any torture was administered to certain, more recalcitrant POWs and not to others is unacceptable. Even though only a small percent of prisoners were tortured by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, it wasn’t right. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s standards, torturing prisoners to get information is justified. It isn’t. Not ever. All nations must adhere to the Geneva Convention’s rules of warfare.As anyone who knew or worked with me in those years knows that my heart has always been with the soldiers. I should have been clearer that my anger back then was at the Nixon Administration. It was the administration, in its cynical determination to keep hostilities between the U.S. and Vietnam alive and to distract people from the administration’s mistakes, who tried to use the POWs as pawns.Addressing The Internet liesBy the end of the Nineties, even more grotesque torture lies began to be circulated about me over the Internet—the ones that continue to this day.Let me quote a former POW, Captain Mike McGrath (USN Retired), president of the POW-NAM Organization. In a letter to Roger Friedman, at the time a columnist for Fox411, on Friday, January 12, 2001 (he gave Friedman permission to make the letter public) McGrath wrote:Yes, the Carrigan/Driscoll/strips of paper story is an Internet hoax. It has been around since Nov 1999 or so. To the best of my knowledge none of this ever happened. This is a hoax story placed on the Internet by unknown Fonda haters. No one knows who initiated the story. I have spoken with all the parties named: Carrigan, Driscoll, et al. They all state that this particular story is a hoax and wish to disassociate their names from the false story. They never made the statements attributed to them.In his letter, McGrath also said to Friedman that by the time I went to Hanoi in 1972, treatment of the POWs was starting to improve and that I “did not bring torture or abuse to the POWs,” but that one man [Hoffman], the “senior ranking man in a room full of new guys,” was tortured (“hung by his broken arm”) to make him come to the meeting with me. McGrath wrote:Why one man (name withheld by request) was picked out for torture of his broken arm is unknown…The answer is, it never happened!Will what I have written here stop the myths from continuing to be spread on the Internet and in mass mailings to conservative Republicans? I don’t know. Some people seem to need to hate and I make a convenient lightning rod. I think the lies and distortions serve some right-wing purpose—fundraising? Demonizing me so as to scare others from becoming out-spoken anti-war activists? Who knows? But at least here, on my blog (and in my memoirs), there is a place where people who are genuinely interested in the truth can find it.[1] PP Vol. 1V, p. 43 (Italics in the original)[2] As Hitler had done to the Netherlands during World War II. German High Commissioner Seyss-Inquart was condemned to death at Nuremberg for opening the dikes in Holland.[3] Oval Office Conversation No. 719-22, May 4, 1972; Nixon White House Tapes; National Archives at College Park, College Park MD[4] Hearings before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives, 92 Congress, Second Session, Sept. 10 & 25th, 1972 (Washington: Government Printing Office): 7552[5] Hersh, The P.O.W. Issue: A National Issue is Born, Dayton (Ohio) Journal-Herald, 13-18 Feb 1971[6] Newsweek, 4/16/73[7] Nixon Presidential Materials Staff, White House Special Files: Staff Mamber & Office Files: H.R. Haldeman: Box 47: Folder: H. Notes Jan-Feb-Mar 1973 National Archives[8] NYT, 7 April 1973,11[9] In Love and War, p.447[10] P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, John G. Hubbell, 91,430[11] New York Times, 30 April 1973.To show your support:– Repost Jane’s blog on your own website.– Share Jane’s post to your Facebook pages, and on Twitter.– Click here and sign this pledge to let Jane know you stand with her.Share This PostPREVIOUS ARTICLEA SENSE OF COMMUNITYNEXT ARTICLEFORGIVENESS355 CommentsWilliam Brighenti January 15, 2015, 4:36 pmAs Jefferson said and wrote, a democracy requires an informed citizenry. Individuals are not absolved simply out of ignorance. Should we absolve all of the Nazis who believed the propaganda of Hitler and were lied to? Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex upon leaving office. Today that smae military industrial complex is alive and well, profiting from our professional army in the middle east. I opposed the Vietnam War back in the 1960s; and I oppose our country killing civilians in the middle east today. We are all responsible for allowing these endless wars, and we cannot absolve ourselves by claiming simply that we were lied to. It didn’t work at Nuremberg, nor should it here and now.jim davis October 28, 2015, 9:16 amYou can always count on American’s to do the right thing after they try everything else.- W. ChurchillI think the next election will determine America’s fate.As Jefferson said and wrote, a democracy requires an informed citizenry.Robert K Owen May 20, 2015, 9:57 amDear Ms. Fonda – I have read your account with interest, and I am glad that I have found it. You visited our barracks when I was at Fort Ord in 1972. I was at Company C, 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade…assigned as Admin Asst (Company Clerk) to the Company Commander. I always wondered how it was that you came to our Company. I felt our CO was relatively progressive, and that may have played a part. I don’t now recall much of what you said to us, specifically…just the general jist of your message. But, I do recall you counseled us to “always question why” and “think for ourselves”…something along those lines. That was a part of your talk that managed to stick with me. That was good advice, not only for those times, but for all times. Thanks for that!A significant part of my job there was helping some of the kids through the process of discharge or designation due to their inability to adapt to the military environment or desire for conscientious objection status. That was very interesting to me. I did not serve in Vietnam. I received orders for assignment there, but my First Sergeant raised a fuss with HQ about needing me here, so they rescinded. I was lucky.After service, I worked my way through college, with help from the GI Bill…and on to a 31-year career in Finance with Quest Diagnostics. I retired in 2014. I have also been a singer/songwriter/musician since my teenage years. Two years ago, a colleague and I formed a Chapter of Soldier Songs and Voices, here in Portland, Oregon. We are helping to establish community for vets by providing guitar lessons and writing workshops, free of charge. My inspiration for this came from a news article I saw about Roger Waters (songwriter/musician in Pink Floyd), who was doing something similar in New York City. This endeavor has been both challenging and rewarding for me. It has been a good way for me to give back.Over the years, I have always been able to separate (in my mind) the service in the military from the politics of war. Looking back, your visit to us in 1972 helped me begin to establish that mindset. Thank you.Robert OwenJane May 22, 2015, 2:46 pmRobert, I remember vividly my visit to Ft Ord. It was very important to me. I totally agree with you about the importance of separating the servicemen (and now women) from the politics of war. Everyone in the Peace Movement that I knew felt the same way. I think it’s the hawks, beginning with the Regan administration, that started the myth of the Peace Movement blaming the soldiers. Thank you for writing. xChris Pilgrim May 28, 2015, 8:45 amMs. Fonda, you make me proud to be an American! I had to “school” someone today on how your actions in Vietnam were from love and concern, not malice. I am grateful for people like you who aren’t afraid to stand up for what they feel is right and important. Those who fight for truth have paved the way for equality and,as a gay man, I couldn’t be more appreciative. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.” -William FaulknerChels October 1, 2015, 7:53 amDear JaneMy name is Chelsie, I’m in my early 20s, and a University student from Melbourne, Australia. Having never studied the Vietnam War in depth (until now) I had no idea of your significance in the antiwar movement. In my Vietnam War class at Uni, we are to write an essay on an area of the war of our choosing. I have chosen to write about you and the misunderstanding and depth of feeling against you which still continues today. From all of my reading and research so far, all I really have to say is: “Thank you for standing up for humanity, thank you for sharing the truth, you are an absolute inspiration!”Kindest regards, all the way from Melbourne, AustraliaChelsiejim davis October 28, 2015, 8:59 amJane, I can relate to your statement about unknown people receiving attention when they went to N. Vietnam.I’m an unknown author who wrote a book, The Rise And Fall of America’s Middle Class (why it happened and what you can do to restore prosperity). It’s about middle class history from 1900 to the present and the major events and legislation that caused it to rise (the New Deal 1933 to 1981) and fall (the Raw Deal 1982 to present) The book has facts and statistics from official government sources showing every single long term economic indicator has gone down since 1982. Examples: Performance charts that show minimum wage raises are directly linked to lower unemployment rates and greater GDP growth rates.I need your help to get the word out about this book. I’m sure you want to read this 124 page book before promoting it. [email protected] you in advance,Jim Davisjim davis October 28, 2015, 9:04 amPS, I place so much importance on the next election I am willing to give a free copy to anyone upon request.Jim Davis.jim davis October 29, 2015, 7:32 amJane, is a chapter in my book.The Letter That Changed AmericaBy the late ’60s many people began to believe the liberal movement had taken the nation to far to the left. I was one of them. A survey revealed nearly 40 percent of college students favored socialism. Most people thought the unions went too far trying to get legislation passed that would have made strikers eligible for welfare and food stamps, which enraged corporate America and most of the public. Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe At Any Speed” ignited the consumer movement forcing automobile manufactures to add safety features. (It is not well known but some auto executives advocated safety features but could not compete if they produced them and urged legislation setting standards) President Nixon supported the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and the Clean Air Act. After a river in Cleveland, Ohio caught on fire, and burned out of control for days, he created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) The Poor People’s Campaign set up a six-week encampment on the National Mall in Washington. Nixon proposed a guaranteed annual income and declared, “I am a Keynesian.” One business leader publicly declared “they want to roll up the business community and put it in a trash can.” Meanwhile a bewildered business community just sat there taking hit after hit everyday, in the media, fearing bad publicity if they responded.They did respond, however, by using one of the most successful strategy’s ever in history. A single letter written to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and a Supreme Court decision set in motion the dynamics that brought on the conservative movement and enabled corporate America’s takeover of the political process. In 1971 a distinguished corporate lawyer, who was a member of 11 corporate boards, wrote a 14-page confidential letter to his friend, Eugene Sydnor, the director of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce titled, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System” which became known as the “Powell Memorandum.” Mr. Powell specialized in corporate mergers and takeovers, served on the board of Phillip Morris, represented the tobacco industry in several cases and was a former president of the American Bar Association. Mr. Powell was famous in legal circles for structuring sentences when arguing in court and applied that skill composing his letter (I think he was a natural born bullshit artIst). Just read the following “quotations”!The Powell Memo outlined ”a bold policy of how big business could control key elements of American society in a manor the public wouldn’t notice.” Mr. Powell noted “criticism was coming from all respectable elements of society; from the campus, the pulpit, the media, artist, scientists, and politicians.” Powell, a Democrat, advised the Chamber and corporate America to “become heavily involved in molding public opinion, politics, and law” and outlined a “blueprint on how tobecome far more politically active in order to defend free enterprise against socialist, communists, or fascist trends.” Powell advocated “constant surveillance of textbook, newsprint,49television content and a purge of left wing elements.” As a result conservatives began purchasing publishing companies, newspapers, radio, and TV stations and staff them with conservative personnel and commentators in order to achieve that goal. Powell told conservatives they “had to confront liberalism everywhere and in any way possible.” He told them they “would have to build a new group of organizations and needed a scale of financing only available through a joint effort.”Powell said that conservatives would have to “put aside political differences, ego, and competing differences in order to achieve common goal’s including less government, lower taxes, and deregulation, by challenging the left agenda everywhere by any means possible”Although Powell isn’t known to have played a role in implementing his proposals, his brilliantly crafted memo galvanized nervous business leaders, and working through the Chamber, they began implementing his ideas with a vengeance. Business leaders and conservatives organized a new generation of think tanks, media monitors, legal groups, and networking organizations all dedicated to “the values of free enterprise, individual freedoms, and limited government.” That effort was well under way when the first one was incorporated as the Heritage Foundation. The Manhattan Institute, Cato Institute, Citizens for A Sound Economy and Accuracy In Academia, are some of the better-known ones that followed later.One goal was to “convince the public that corporate interests are in the public interest and that labor, health, safety, and the environment are special interests.” Another goal was to “influence legislation, government policy and the legal system”Today if Rush Limbaugh wants something on vouchers it’s immediately in his hands. If Bill O’Reilly needs a guest to talk about death taxes (estate taxes) he has one from one of these think tanks. More than 400 million dollars a year fund their think tank operations. In 2009 Heritage Foundation’s budget alone was $80,378,250 and listed assets of $164,819,678. People in the know estimate 36,000 conservatives have been trained on values, leadership, use of the media, and agenda development at the conservative Leadership Institute in Virginia. Insiders affectionately call its graduates, and mainstream media outlets the “Conservative Media Machine.” About 2,000 of the graduates are core leaders who make between $75,000 and $200,000 and all of them are monitored by other professionals for performance. You see them regularly on TV, including Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS) commenting and making recommendations. The founder of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquest, is one of the core leaders. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell attended the Leadership Institute. The Conservative Media Machine operated at full speed to get George Bush reelected in 2004. They operated through a network of right leaning TV and radio channels including, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel which provides GOP presidential candidates a free 24/7 campaign infomercial. The Christian Church community has created an electronic media giant as a result of aid and advice provided by conservatives and is considered part of the Conservative Media Machine as well.Powell encouraged “corporations and trade organizations to create their own citizen organizations with names that would mask their corporate sponsorship and true purpose.” The National Wetlands Coalition, whose logo had a duck flying over a swamp, was sponsored by oil and gas companies to ease restrictions on wetlands for developing oil and business ventures while advocating “responsible” EPA policies. The Consumer Alert organization fought government regulations of product safety and at the same time advocated “responsible” consumer protection legislation in media adds. Keep America Beautiful, sponsored by the bottling industry, promoted anti litter campaigns but successfully fought recycling legislation they deemed unfavorable and urged the public to write Congress. (You old timers remember when a deposit was required for soda glass bottles that had to be returned to get your deposit back.) Hundreds of them have been set up over the years and they were extremely effective at masking their true purpose and some even solicited donations from an unwary public. Recently the airwaves were flooded with the safe, environmental friendly process known as fracking. The public airwaves were void of scientist and activist wishing to present their side. An activist with “what the frack is going on” printed on his forehead was removed from a public hearing when police noticed it as he objected to and questioned why “no liability clauses” were written in leases. His name was Jim Davis. The police were considerate to me and one even expressed admiration for my cause. He didn’t “approve of my (news worthy) method” — even though it worked!Powell advised the Chamber to “establish a roster of eminent, highly qualified social science and economic scholars, and invite them to speak at conservative-sponsored public and media events.”51“It should include several well known names whose reputation would be widely respected even when disagreed with.” Scholars like Milton Friedman are an example of those who were invited to speak at these conservative sponsored media events, and conventions, and suddenly found them selves gaining fame and winning awards. Friedman won a Noble Prize in 1976 and he became an economic adviser to President Reagan. Although off topic, it is worth noting Friedman advocated abolishing medical licenses. Quackery voodoo medicine and quackery voodoo economics!Powell advised the chamber to “recruit a staff of scholars to evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science, and sociology, whose long term objective is restoring balance essential to long term academic freedom.” Today’s children, as noted on page 3, are being taught that to think differently poses a threat to democracy! These scholars also provided incentives to independent scholars and authors, who believed in the free enterprise system, to induce more publishing. Additionally they provided incentives (bribes) to neutral authors to support conservative views. He advised the chamber to “establish a staff of speakers, thoroughly familiar with the media and with speaking skills, to speak on college campuses, at public, and media events in order to mold public opinion.” Within a couple of years an army of skilled speakers were on the college speaking circuit and by 1977 the number of college students advocating socialism had dropped significantly.Powell recommended the “business community create a business funded legal center to promote business interests in the nations courts.” In 1973 the Pacific Legal Foundation, PLF, was formed in Sacramento California. It was the first of a number of so called “public interest” law firms dedicated to promoting business interests, fight so called frivolous lawsuits, and encourage frivolous lawsuit legislation. Because some suits were indeed frivolous, they were successful in tort reform making it harder for legitimate lawsuits to be filed against Big Business as was its real goal. Tort reform is still going on. The PLF specialized in defending business interests against clean air and water legislation, the closing of federal wilderness areas to oil and gas exploration, worker rights, and corporate taxation.The Powell Memo recommended “Business Roundtables be set up with CEOs of competing businesses as members putting aside personal differences with the goal of finding common ground and aggressively launching campaigns to gain political acceptance and promote common interests.” The first one was organized in 1973. Prior to that in 1972, it became common to read articles, and see commentators on TV about union wages and benefits being equal to those offered by non union firms, praising unions, but raising the question if they were still needed. Between 1972 and 1975 many dues paying union members took notice and using “what have you done for me lately mentality” voted to decertify many unions. The articles didn’t mention union wages and benefit’s “set the standard” non union firms “must” offer in order to hire and retain a good quality workforce. I well remember seeing these articles and even though I was not a fan of unions at that time, I wondered52if something was up.BUST THE UNIONSThe first Business Roundtable was set up in 1973 and consisted of 40 of the top 50 Fortune 500 Corporations CEOs. The first Business Roundtable meeting agenda was set to list priorities and included several think tank advisers who provided information and made recommendations. This is some of the information they supplied. In 1971 union PAC money made up 50 percent of all PAC money, only 175 firms had registered lobbyist in Washington, plus only 40 Fortune 500 companies had public affairs offices in Washington. By 1979, 80 percent of them had public affairs offices in Washington, full of lobbyists. The CEOs were provided statistics about the big increase of lobbyist and assured them more PAC funds were forthcoming and were confident this additional source would overwhelm union lobbying and contributions to politicians. By 1979 union PAC money was less than 25 percent of the total and more than 2000 firms had lobbyists in D.C.! The CEOs were reminded about the union news articles and predicted dues paying union members would continue succumbing to “what have you done for me lately mentality” speeding up a trend of desertification. That helps explains the sharp percentage drop in membership from 1972 onward.From the time the National Labor Relations Act legalized unions, during the Great Depression, making them a powerful force, the business community was committed to their destruction and the Business Roundtable made it a priority. In order to increase profits using cheap foreign labor was the tool they decided to use and using PAC money to amend foreign trade policies was the strategy. Small policy changes had already been made in foreign steel and auto import quotas and since the auto and steel worker unions were the biggest and highest paid, easing restrictions on auto and steel imports was given priority. Within months foreign steel and high-quality Japanese autos were taking big shares of the market and the race to the bottom for the U. S. economy had begun. By the late 70s the big industrial cities in the Northeast were struggling to overcome the adverse effects of foreign trade policy changes. Many steel companies, appliance makers, auto production facilities, and support industries closed their doors for good and cities lost tax revenue as people moved seeking work else where. Most of them moved to “right to work” states in the south. I was one of them and felt sorry for the poor workers I met! It didn’t take long for the term “Rust Belt” to be coined and excessive union wages were blamed. Powell’s recommendations began paying off handsomely by the 1980s in coordination of President Reagan’s “hands off business” philosophy.Many scholars credit Mr. Powell for inspiring the most brilliant strategy in history. The juggernaut he inspired more than 40 years ago is still growing and gaining influence today. Mr. Powell delivered his pernicious, brilliantly crafted memo to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce on Aug. 23, 1971. A few months later, on Jan 17, 1972, its author, Lewis J. Powell Jr. was sworn in as a U.S. Supreme Court53Associate Justice. As a Justice, Powell wrote the opinion for the following case.FIRST NATIONAL BANK of BOSTON vs. BELLOTTIThink the now-infamous “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” ruling in 2010 was the Supreme Court’s first foray into big-money politics? Think again!In 1978 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that corporations had a First Amendment right to make contributions in order to influence the political process. Justice Powell wrote the opinion that “a Massachusetts statute outlawing spending corporate funds to influence public opinion and voting opinions was a violation of free speech.” Because of this decision Congressmen from both parties now had access to huge amounts of special interest corporate campaign funds, if and only if, they supportedand voted the “right” way. If politicians stood by their principles and didn’t go along they were easy targets for a primary challenger. What do you think they did and what do you think you would do? Most of them, as most people would, went along. For members of Congress and the Senate, they were at the mercy of the special interest groups who would contribute campaign funds to the politicians who supported their views. The politicians could either go along or risk being outspent by an opponent and the survivors went along. This decision had a big influence on the Citizens United case decades later.By the ’90s numerous Business Roundtables had been organized with 2300 members. Politicians, commentators and prominent, well respected business leaders began campaigning for the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. They bombarded the public with assurances, through editorials, news releases, radio and TV commentaries that NAFTA would protect and provide them with more high paying jobs, stop immigration from Mexico, and raise environmental standards. It had the exact opposite effect. Most Favored Nation Status for China soon followed. The public was led to believe globalization was a natural unstoppable phenomenon.Increased lobbying of Congress, encouraged by the Powell Memorandum, and the Supreme Court’s First National Bank of Boston v. Bellot decision set in motion the dynamics that would dominate the political process from that time on. From that time on members of Congress realized, from the day they took the oath of office, they had to raise a huge amount of money to finance their next campaign in a few years and corporations could legally contribute if they liked your record. In the early ’70s people were shocked when the first Congressional campaign exceeded $100,000. That figure is in the millions today. The power of Big Business lobbying quickly overwhelmed the unions’ efforts to lobby against legislation that favored special interests.The lobbying of unions had a huge positive impact on the middle class and is the most unknown and misunderstood benefit of good strong unions. Union members were all members of the middle class and statistics prove non union middle class families benefited as well. Since no other middle class lobbying organizations had the clout unions once had, what we have is a middle class, and a54nation, in decline. From the mid-70s onward not one single piece of legislation has been passed without changes to satisfy business interests. President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act is a prime example because of insurance lobbying against the “public option provision.” Although off topic, I consider the 30-year FHA home loan to be the “public option home loan” enticing conventional mortgage lenders to keep offering affordable long term 30 year loans.Lobbyist activities led to amending the Glass-Steagall Act, which outlawed the risky activities that got us into the Great Depression. These practices that became once again legal set in motion the dynamics that led to the financial crash of 2008. (Did I mention it’s a good example of good vs bad legislation?) The Glass-Steagall Act was a law that favored the individual because it protected his savings against loss! I think it favored the banking industry by default as well. The banksters who lost nothing, due to the bailout, may not agree!It rattled my head and blew my mind when I read the Powell Memo because I immediately understood why so many ordinary people, and small business people, vote against their own interests. I know the results had a great impact on me, the way I thought and voted.The Powell Memo gives credence to Winston Churchill’s quote, “the truth is incontrovertible, malice may distort it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” This 14-page letter caused more change to America than anything in my lifetime, but remains unknown to most. If the information in this chapter was common knowledge I’m sure it would play a role in future politics!jim davis October 29, 2015, 10:13 pmThis is a chapter in my book The Rise and Fall of Americas Middle ClassLog in to replySheryl Linard November 20, 2015, 7:50 pmMs Fonda, Unfortunately the media can and do twist, turn, spin and portray anyone in a bad light to get a sensational story, whether it’s true or not doesn’t seem to matter! You can only tell the truth but there will always be people who won’t believe you but that’s their issue. You have explained an apologizied many times over and for some peopke , it will never be good enough.. I do applaud you for taking the time again to explain yout Hanoi trip and what actually happened vs. the media’s spin on it. Hopefully this will put to rest once and for all the rumors and innuendos that have haunted you for so many years!! By the way, I think you are a terrific actress and I enjoy your movies!Log in to replySheryl Linard November 20, 2015, 8:03 pmMs Fonda, Unfortunately the media can and do twist, turn, spin and portray anyone in a bad light to get a sensational story, whether it’s true or not doesn’t seem to matter! You can only tell the truth and there will always be people who won’t believe you but that’s their issue. You have explained an apologizied many times over and for some people , it will never be good enough.. I do applaud you for taking the time again to explain your Hanoi trip and what actually happened vs. the media’s spin on it. Hopefully this will put to rest once and for all the rumors and innuendos that have haunted you for so many years!! By the way, I think you are a terrific actress and I enjoy your movies!Jane November 29, 2015, 3:21 pmThanks Sheryl. I saw “Bridge of Spies” last night. A most fine film, by the way. In it, Tom Hanks says to Mark Rylance, “It doesn’t matter what people think. You know what you did.” That really struck me though, In my case, I would add “…You know what you did, and why.”Jim Childress December 14, 2015, 4:11 pmI’m glad I found this because I always believed you had no regrets about your visit to Hanoi. The regrets you’ve expressed are a comfort, but incomplete.I’m a Vietnam Veteran (69-70).You had the means to protest without going over there. You could’ve obtained pictures from Hanoi of bombed out dykes from your friends at the embassy.You made a mistake, I get that… I can forgive that given the opportunity.If you had just said forty years ago, “I understand your pain and I’m sorry that I went to Hanoi. I made a mistake, please forgive me.” No excuses… We’d be over this by now. But you still think you were justified.You could’ve been writing *why* you did it now after we’d gotten over it and we might all be slapping our foreheads and patting you on the back now…You f*cked up… twice.I don’t hate you even though I feel I have suffered because of your actions and the actions of protesters encouraged by your actions. It’s perception and perception can become the truth.Heckled, spit on, labeled as baby killers…I was one month past my 19th birthday…How would you feel about Jane Fonda if you served in Vietnam? Put it on and wear it around awhile before you answer that. That’s where you need real closure, with Vietnam Vets and their families. Nobody else *really* cares about your visit, don’t fool yourself…I haven’t read all your comments here but I doubt any of them were Vietnam Veterans. Most of them probably weren’t even born then.I’m afraid you’ve let this go on to long without an apology to those who fought and died in Vietnam. Many say our sacrifice was not in vain because it stopped the spread of Communism to other Asian countries in the region.There’s no excuse for going to Hanoi, laughing and singing with our enemies while we held our dying buddies.JimJane December 16, 2015, 2:07 pmDEAR JIM, I have apologized many many times both on national TV and privately to veterans.I do not regret going to Hanoi along with the many hundreds of Americans…including Vietnam Veterans, journalists, diplomats,…who went before me. I regret sitting on the gun.Jim Childress December 16, 2015, 3:27 pmThanks for your reply.Log in to replyDaniel Gleason January 17, 2016, 12:25 pmForgiveness is far overdue, but what can you do but what you’ve already done, which is apologize and explain. There are some hateful, chauvinistic Americans who just want somebody to hate on while they wave the flag and say “My country is always right,” or “My country, right or wrong–or else. People with half a brain should have already resolved all this. I was against the Vietnam War and resented that those who were for it said I was un-American because of my opposition. I loved my country and wanted to right it. I think you did, as well. All I can say is go in peace.Jane February 2, 2016, 12:29 pmThanks, Daniel. I’m with you!Daniel Gleason January 17, 2016, 12:32 pmJim, people protest in their own way and it doesn’t mean they don’t love their country. Vietnam vets were treated despicably when they returned from their service, but many who protested the war were simply trying to end it and save more American young men from dying in a civil war we should not have been involved in. If you watch the documentary “Fog of War,” which won an Oscar in 2003, you will hear former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara say that the “Domino Theory” proved to be wrong. Vietnam fell and there was no domino effect. That was the bill of goods that we were sold to go over there and risk our lives and die. My vehemence is directed toward LBJ, Nixon and the Pentagon that lied to keep the military/industrial complex spinning in greased and bloody grooves and so officers could get their field promotions.SW SImpson January 30, 2016, 6:02 pmWithout going into great detail, and having read some of the apologies and reasons behind some actions taken during the Vietnam War… I have to say that my father was a navigator on B-52’s during the Vietnam War. I was about 4 years old and understood that my dad may not come home. While my dad was gone, several terrible things happened to my family and when my dad returned, I no longer would have anything to do with him. I think in my little child’s mind I must have thought that had my dad been there that none of those things would have happened to me. It wasn’t until I was about 18 and had moved out of the house that I started to have a real relationship with my dad. He is 85 now and an amazing man and we are great friends… I am so happy and proud to be able to say that now. What I am getting to is that when my dad and I were first starting to communicate and become friends in my early 20’s, I heard an audio recording of what Jane Fonda had said… “I am speaking to those of you in B-52 bombers. This is an illegal war… war criminals… death penalty…” I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I literally doubled over and almost vomited. It broke my heart. That little boy of 4 years old needed his daddy, and here is this person saying that my dad should be executed. Jane, you need to know that broke my heart! It took years to sort that out in my head, to let go of the hurt and anger…. Seeing Jane at a rally standing up for the families of servicemen and women during the awful Iraq war was just the thing I had been hoping to see. To read a little bit about how Jane feels about those things now, has really helped. I am happy to say that I was able to enjoy Monster-in-Law with a dying friend, and that I absolutely LOVE “Frankie and Gracie”. I think this blog page is wonderful… to read about the past and to be able to say something that had hurt me so deeply for so long. Its so much better when we all understand and like one another. Thank you Jane.Jane February 2, 2016, 12:15 pmDear SW, what a beautiful thing to write. I am so grateful and so very sorry for the hurt I caused you as a boy. So so sorry. Thank you for your forgiveness. xHenry March 15, 2016, 10:43 pmAs a Vietnam veteran and retired military of 23 years, I would like to hear more about your years with the communist group Students For a Democratic Society and your connections with Bill Ayers and the violent Weather Underground. Are you holding any seminars on that subject ??Jane March 26, 2016, 4:15 pmDear Henry, I’m sorry you feel as you do but to answer your questions: Never met Bill Ayers. Wish I had. I’ve been told he’s a very smart professor. Never was a member of SDS though I married one of the founders who co-authored The Port Huron statement, SDS’s founding document. It’s a brilliant essay on what real democracy would mean. You should read it. SDS didn’t become violent till later. Never did believe in armed struggled. I’m more of a Gandhian non-violent type. Though I understand why Black Americans who have been enslaved, lynched, shot, imprisoned and denied equal education and jobs would consider taking up arms as the Black Panthers did. I’m glad you survived the war and hope you’re doing well. JaneV May 17, 2016, 1:44 pmMs. Fonda,I don’t know much about you, save for mostly common things; your career, father, and the story of your visit to Vietnam. And to be blunt, I never cared. Until I started seeing a veteran. And saw what he has gone through. I have never been pro-war, but never really spoke up about things. I keep my head down and raise my family. Strangely enough, that is what brings me here today.A few days ago my teenaged daughter and I were discussing her future plans. She hopes to become a doctor and because we are well under what is considered “low-income” we have been trying to consider all options. At the moment those options seem to include enlisting in the Armed Forces. Somehow the conversation turned, and I brought up the story about you. I cannot recall where I heard it, or how long ago. But I do remember being shocked and disgusted at the thought that someone could be so vile. My daughter had the same reaction.But she did something I didn’t do. She asked me “Why?” Why would someone do that? I honestly answered that I didn’t know, and I encouraged her to look it up on her own. And because I try to lead by example, I did so myself. I Googled you, tacked “Hanoi” on the end of your name, clicked a few different links.I will say this: I wasn’t there, or even alive, when you visited Vietnam. So I personally cannot attest to the validity of either side. But I do not agree with the captions I saw on those pictures that labeled you as “adoring” or “searching for a target” or otherwise. You didn’t give off that kind of impression to me. I also do not think that someone with as prolific career as yourself would have been as successful if there had been truth to the stories.When I get home tonight, I am going to talk with my daughter. I am going to tell her what I have learned. I will encourage her to do her own search and her own reading, so that she can form her own conclusions here. She is smart enough to weigh facts and use common sense.Thank you, for taking the time to pen your own version of things, so that those who wish to educate themselves can do so. And thank you for the support you have shown to our troops over the years. Now that I have personal experience with what type of hardships they endure after Serving, I am a lot more conscious of their struggles.I just thought I would let you know that not all younger people believe everything they hear or see online.Be well,-VJane May 27, 2016, 3:19 pmThank you, V. This email means the world to me. I’m glad you read my Hanoi post. Thnaks. xAndrew P House June 8, 2016, 12:11 amI apologize if this question has already been answered….and it likely has, but I wanted to ask you directly. I’m going to put my personal politics aside & just ask what I want to ask. What you did during the Vietnam War to an average citizen would have been considered high treason & the person would have been sentenced to death. Because of your celebrity status you were given a pass. How does that make you feel? I know WHY you did what you did, but as a US citizen you have to realize had you not been who you are, you’d have been tried & convicted for high treason. What are your thoughts on it?Jane June 10, 2016, 6:31 pmAndrew, thanks for your question. If I’d done what some accuse me of, I agree that I should have been tried as a traitor but I didn’t. Believe me, the Nixon Administration searched for things I could be tried for. They had the Justice Department et al searching for things to pin on me but they could find none. They poured over the actual transcripts of my radio broadcasts from Hanoi—the actual words I said, not how my words were translated into Vietnamese–and found there was nothing treasonous. And trust me, if there had been anything treasonous, the Nixon administration wouldn’t have cared what kind of celebrity I was, they would have strung me up. Read my blog “What REally Happened in Hanoi”…I think that’s the title. It’s in my archived blogs. The head of the POW/MIA organization at the time of my trip said I had not done what I was accused of doing to the POWs. It’s amazing to me that despite the falsehoods said abut me, they continue to circulate.Andrew P House July 2, 2016, 1:23 amThank you for your reply. I’m quite busy so I haven’t checked in some time. I do thank you for your reply. I have read what you suggested, and you are right. I didn’t want to admit it, but after going through various resources, I have found nothing to dispute what you have said. I grew up with many Vietnam veterans that have a bit of a hatred for you. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. I’m sure you’re used to that type of negative backlash. My resources are far reaching & I’ve found nothing at all to validate the claims I’ve heard for many years. Aside from the media. Media outlets are not valid to me.I am sorry if I came across as a bit brash in my last post. That wasn’t my intention. Thank you for taking the time to respond. It means a lot. 🙂Rod McLaughlin November 29, 2016, 7:36 am1. No American has ever been executed for treason2. “Celebrity status” doesn’t give you a pass – it makes the authorities more determined to make an example of you. Less famous Americans who went to Hanoi were ignored.Jenna June 16, 2016, 8:03 pmHi Jane,I am a big fan of your show Grace and Frankie, I have one episode left of Season 2! In high school I took a course titled Lessons of the Vietnam War and my teacher told us the story about you turning in the social security numbers to the North Vietnamese Guards. At the time I was outraged. When I got home I told my dad what I had learned in class that day and he did not believe the story that my teacher had taught and told me that it wasn’t true. At the time I was still hesitant because I did not know why my teacher would make up such a story so I looked it up and found out that it was all a lie. I recently thought about this incident from years ago and read this article. I appreciate your story and I am glad that you clarified the whole situation. I hope that teacher is no longer telling his students that story as fact.Jane June 18, 2016, 4:52 pmThank you Jenna. xx JaneChristopher A Howard July 22, 2016, 4:35 amDear Miss Fonda,Somewhere I lost the plot. You courageously went to North Vietnam where you voiced the feelings and expressed the views of millions of people, not just Americans that the war in South East Asia was wrong, wrong wrong (as most wars are) and it had to stop. In 1973 the US left. That wasn’t a bad result. And 43 years later you are still being tried in the court of public opinion. That, too, is wrong, wrong wrong. Maybe you found that the NV’s were just people, capable of cruelty and humanity, that they could sing and laugh and dance and cry and everything else that makes us human. This probably wasn’t a popular view in some quarters, especially unpopular with war profiteers and their supporters.The real deal behind all the negative stuff being levelled against you stems from the fact that you exposed a colossal lie and people sent their sons out there who died for really nothing and that must be hard to take.Allow me to wish you good luck and success in your pursuits and endeavours.Christopher A HowardJane July 28, 2016, 5:50 pmChristopher, thank you. xxRandy July 23, 2016, 10:09 pmHello Jane,I very much enjoyed reading your side of the story concerning this still controversial topic.Even before I stumbled across your blog I had always believed there was much more that “anti Fonda” folks were leaving out!I thoroughly admire your candidness in every interview I’ve seen on various talk shows, and I always speak up for you when I hear such ignorant remarks even to this day (amazing) in regards to the Vietnam war.I personally know that I’m a good judge of character, and I admire and respect you for being such an open person.In closing, just wanted to say I would’ve loved to have met you when you lived here in Atlanta! I’ve heard only great things from those who have.Much love,RandyRod McLaughlin November 27, 2016, 4:20 pmThanks for this page. I’ve always wondered why Jane Fonda had to apologise for anything.“Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes.”Well, first of all, it’s ridiculous to think North Vietnam would recruit a famous movie star as an anti-aircraft gunner. But more importantly, what’s wrong with shooting down bombers? – any bombers, in any country, which are bombing civilians. North Vietnam committed terrible war crimes – but shooting down B-52s was not one of them.Log in to replyJay Chellew December 19, 2016, 12:17 pmHi JaneFinding this is like opening the best Christmas present ever. You’ve written such a detailed and compelling account giving me and all of your long-time supporters such a wonderful gift. I just turned 70 years old and served in the Army from 1966-1969 with the majority of my time spent in Alaska working in a NIKE missile unit. I’m a Cold War Veteran which surprisingly most generations that followed mine are not aware of. They seem to be knowledgeable of Vietnam but know little or nothing about the decades of facing the menace of the Soviet Union. My wife Jane and I have been admirers and true supporters of you going back as far as I can remember. From the strong roles you’ve played on the big screen to your activism and dedication to others and their causes has truly affected us in a deep and positive way. I just don’t know how this ongoing controversy started let alone how long it has lasted. Just last week I received and email from my ex-sister in law dredging up the same old stories. I’ve had my battles over the years with family, friends, co-workers, and a few Army buddies and gave the information I had while encouraging them to do their own research. It’s truly mind boggling!! My support for you in this matter has never wavered and the more people have thrown it in my face the stronger I get. Both Jane and I have always been aware of all you have done for Veterans and the Military community before and after this incident and we’ve read and researched as much as we could get our hands over the years. Thank you so much for the post. I think it’s important for everyone to be aware of the full and true story. Our best to you always.Much Love and RespectJay and Jane ChellewLog in to replySteve February 6, 2017, 12:04 pmDear Jane,I have had a deep abiding respect for you for over 4 decades. I have been inspired by your humanitarianism and activism over the years. I remember vividly participating at an anti-war, Vietnam rally in San Diego, CA with you. As I recall, you came with Tom Hayden, and Peter Boyle, both who are now deceased. Fortunately, I was never sent to Viet Nam. I received school deferments and then a high lottery number, 296.I was brainwashed about the VietNam war from age 16 until 19 years of age. I was led to believe by my conditioning that the U.S. government was there to protect the world from the spread of communism, and that North Vietnam was the aggressor. It was in the late 60s or early 70s that I heard Senator Frank Church, at a local college here in San Diego, explain that the U.S. government was in violation of the Geneva Accords and that the U.S. government was fighting an illegal and immoral war.I can attest to that the anti-war, VietNam demonstration I attended with you in San Diego was very peaceful and respectful toward our veterans. who were fighting and dying on behalf of the U.S. government as well as those who returned back to the U.S.. I recall a day prior to the demonstration I saw a friend at a local store and told him about the demonstration. The owner of the store overheard me and began screaming at me at the top of his lungs, telling me to, “Get the fuck out of his store.” These were highly charged times and Nixon had further divided the country into two groups, and he used fascist rhetoric to silence his adversaries. Thank God for you and the like, who inspired us to march in peace with you.Thank you so much for writing your open letter here about your experiences in the VietNam era as well as being a true champion of peace, women rights, human rights over the years. I hope you become one of the iconic center points to rally against the most dangerous and corrupt man to be in the White House since the founding of our constitution. We need your loving voice more than ever.Only love for you Jane… only love!!!! SteveLog in to replyJane February 7, 2017, 5:32 pmThank you Steve. I’m doing my best. Working and supporting manyy groups and we’re all figuring our the most effective way forward right now. We know that grassroots organizing and getting people elected to local and statewide office is critical. xxxLog in to replySteve February 9, 2017, 11:23 amJane: Please let us know when the next major “freedom march” will happen in the Los Angeles area. Things are getting more and more crazier in the country, and sadly there appears to be no end in sight. Love, SteveLog in to replyJane February 9, 2017, 5:51 pmSteve, see my reply to Eileen.Log in to replySteve February 10, 2017, 6:29 amJane: I searched for Eileen on this page and found no reply from you to her. I live in San Diego but I have friends that live in the Los Angeles area. I sent an email message this morning to San Diego Free Press because I am unable to find any scheduled protest meetings here in San Diego as well. The Indivisible movement is becoming a grass roots efforts nationwide but i was unable to find any planned protests as well. Love, Persist, Resist…. SteveLog in to replyJane February 14, 2017, 1:23 pmSteve, I’m in DC right now but will try to find out if I can if something’s happening in San DiegoLog in to replyDragos Turcu March 11, 2017, 2:01 amDear Mr. Fonda,I completely agree with your upbringing in the fantastic shadow of your father (you made a real Oscar worthy separation / coming of age recital in “On the golden pond” movie and I commend you for that as well. However as someone who lived in a communist country (Romania until 1989) for 18 years I must tell you that the coin will always have two faces.Please see the side that still hurts me: Soviet influence on the peace movement - WikipediaAnd another thing that I don’t understand is the fact that all these progressive / liberal outlets like Amnesty International, Peace Movement etc are always putting a muffle on the suffering behind the Iron Curtain.If you have the curiosity to search Ion Ioanid (Ion Ioanid - Wikipedia) – “Give us each day our daily prison” memories book you will understand why. Unfortunately those facts are not in line with the leftist agenda. At least try to be sincere with yourself. Seeing what is happening now in the world i think Stalin and Lenin are laughing their a**es off in the after world.And indeed they don’t need weapons to fight their wars anymore.Let me know your thoughts about this.Best wishes,Dragos TurcuLog in to replyJane March 22, 2017, 2:19 pmDragos, I have made a film in Russia, when it was the USSR and I agree with you about the wrong doings, the emprisonments, the anti-semitism, the censorship, etc. I was there frequently when Gorbachov was President. I believe that much of the former repressiveness of the USSR has returned under Putin. I have to say, however, that for a very long time, Russia has had little to no influence over any American progressive movements.Log in to replySteve June 1, 2017, 7:39 pmIt is not until Memorial Day 2017 when I learned in detail about Ms. Fonda’s action of historic importance. The fact that this blog started in 2011 and remains active in 2017 speaks for the timeless relevance of her action over 40 years ago.In each of this great nation’s highest controversies, there is always a leading man or woman. Did Jane Fonda go too far in her anti-war efforts? If so, did Edward Snowden go too far? Did our founding fathers went too far? I don’t know.However, I do know that today our nation remains at multiple wars with some other human beings in some foreign lands. Ms. Fonda’s Vietnam experience will remain relevant until the nation returns to peace with the rest of the world.Log in to replyWilliam H. Harris, Jr. March 20, 2018, 12:52 pmI was taken in years ago by the false narrative promoted regarding your trip to Hanoi in1972. I ask for your forgiveness for all the years I have “hated” you for the things I thought you had done in your trip to North Vietnam. I understand now that you simply had a conviction different from mine about the war in Vietnam.My Vietnam story is real simple. I was a Distinguished MIlitary Graduate in 1967 from Arizona State University intending to make a carer of the U.S. Army. I served with the 101st Airborne in 1968 and 1969 as a Captain and Flight Lead in a gunship unit. It was only after being away from Vietnam and out of the service after 4 years that I realized why I had served. I served because men deserve to be properly led in combat. They also deserve officers in command who will bring as many of them back as they took into action… particularly the infantry. I believe I did both. All my flying in Vietnam was done in the 3 most northern provinces of South Vietnam primarily in the Ashua Valley.I married my college sweetheart 51 years ago and have 3 grown sons and 2 grandchildren. I have always lived a Christian creed and admitted when I have fallen off that path. So… for over 45 years I have held a smoldering hatred for your actions in 1972. I humbly repent and ask your forgiveness.With highest regards, respect and Blessings,William H. Harris, Jr.Log in to replyJane March 22, 2018, 12:01 pmDear Mr. Harris, I am very grateful for your words and what they represent. More mov ed and grateful than you can know. Thankn you for that and for your service. Sincerely, JaneLog in to replyJackie April 23, 2018, 7:05 pmI made an account to leave this comment. It will be kind, fairly short…and full of emotion and seriousness. Jane…I may be only 26 but I believe you could potentially teach a lot of my age group an important life lesson from your experience.The reality is…everything you did was considered okay in your particular group and setting. People would spit on soliders in uniform, and many believed we didn’t need to go. Like today, group-think is strong. You were a political figure, a woman, and beautiful.Without even touching on politics, specific issues…I believe this is so relevant to today in the most simple of ways! From sucking on bottles to achieve “Kylie Lips” to destroying towns in the name of African Americans.I like to believe Americans in general are good at heart. Some are evil, like all of humanity (we all hold a bit of subjective “bad”…considering it is legal if caught in a shipwreck to kick off a child from your float in the event ou would both sink) but I think some GOODHEARTED people get caught up in the praise, cheers, and love from others they lose sight of what they are doing. This can go as extreme as Hitler and his influence on everyone (with doing 10x good and then flooding the world with bad) or as simple as “Oh thats sooo gay”Anyways I am cutting this short. But my age group and the younger need it.Think of what you’d do differently without changing your views and passions! I bet you could have done it better…had you took a step back. Rarely does the villian know he’s a villian.He usually thinks he’s a hero. XXXXXXYou still have a chance to be a hero. And not to be rude…but instead of writing a book about yourself maybe try to create a collaboration of many different perspectives on psychological topicsLog in to replyJane May 2, 2018, 6:11 pmJackie, can you tell me more? I’m not 100% sure I follow your meaning. I want to. Of course there are things I wish I could do over: I wish I’d been a better parent. I wish I hadn’t sat on that gun site in North Vietnam. It could paralyze me if I let it. But I believe, instead, it’s better to learn from our mistakes and try to do better, moving forward with positivity. But this may not be what you’re getting at at all. Tell me more also about this book idea. xxLog in to replyMike Davis October 4, 2018, 12:44 pmMs. Fonda: As a Vietnam veteran, ‘69-‘70, I have always appreciated your views and your position on the Vietnam War. As a card carrying member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War while in Vietnam, I have understood your thoughts on the war and respected your traveling to Honoi in an attempt to end the war. I was even ostracized for my agreeing with you at the time by my fellow brothers in Vietnam, but wouldn’t have changed my thoughts at the time and even now. I am 72 years old now and am grateful to you for using your celebrity to represent us. Than you. I’ve always been a true fan and your entire body of work over the years. ❤️✌️Log in to replyMike Davis October 8, 2018, 10:52 amDear Ms. Fonda: As a Vietnam veteran, I have always respected your views and your reasoning for your trip to Hanoi. Unlike many other Vietnam veterans, I never looked at your trip in a disrespectful manner. I knew why you went, simply to try and stop the atrocities and carnage of that war. I spent a year and a half in Vietnam, I extended 6 months for an early out. I saw the war first hand, ‘69-‘70. I was a card carrying member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at the time, and don’t regret it to this day, I am 72 now. I would like to “thank you” for all of your activism and using your celebrity to accomplish many of the things you have done to make this a better world. With much love ❤️ and respect.Jane October 9, 2018, 4:13 pmAppreciate this from you so much, Mike. xxx JaneMike Davis October 8, 2018, 11:04 amP.S. – I also wanted to thank for trip to Standing Rock in November of 2017 and for serving Thanksgiving dinners to all that were there. I was there the first week of November and then again with other veterans to protest the pipeline installation. All before Thanksgiving, so I just miss seeing you while you there. Plus, just missed buying a VIP ticket to see you in Milwaukee on November 3rd, 2018, they were already “sold out” for those tickets. Thank you again for all of your activism on behalf of all of us. Hope to see and meet you at some future event. Respectfully yours. ❤️Jane October 9, 2018, 4:11 pmThanks, Mike. xxxLog in to replyOlivia Kenny January 26, 2020, 7:09 amDear Jane,My name is Olivia and I’m currently an undergrad history student in the U.K. I’m writing my dissertation on your life with a particular focus on your anti-war activism. I’m unsure whether you will see this comment but I would love to take the time to let you know that I’m incredibly in awe of your strength in the face of adversity and for using your platform for good.Your constant support for underrepresented groups and voices in society is incredibly inspiring for young women such as myself, and it’s an honour to be writing about you for my university work. I’m avidly following Fire Drill Fridays here from England, and I can’t wait to see the impact it has over in the U.S.Once again, thank you for being such a great inspiration and for your work which has not only enriched my final-year of University study but my outlook on my own life and the impact I can have on the world and the people around me.-Olivia Kenny.There is so much more. We all owe it to ourselves to open our minds, open our hearts, to forgive, and to seek to know the truth, so that we can prevent future generations, and ourselves, from making the same mistakes…or worse.